Agile Amped Podcast - Inspiring Conversations

It's not uncommon for delivery teams to become so focused on increasing their velocity that they fail to deliver the true business value: features. In the Agile enterprise, it is even more important for teams to focus on delivering complete features rather than simply completing stories. Teams need a way to "look up" to the program level to verify that they're working on the right thing to deliver value at the program level, not necessarily the team level. AgileCraft Peter Jessen says that his company's tool is one such option: it offers a Program Board to help visualize the relationship between team deliverables and program level business value. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Kupe Kupersmith has a bunch of experience in business analysis in traditional and Agile environments, and he still hears from time to time, "We don't do business analysis, we do Agile." But Agile needs BAs too. Documentation is a huge part of the BA's contribution, for which Agile prescribes a less heavy-handed approach. Sometimes a photo of a whiteboard with the rough ideas sketched out is enough documentation. Meanwhile, some developers won't work on new requirements without the requisite documentation, but only as a way of deflecting blame for a defect -- because "that's what the document said." Kupe advocates for the team to think like a team: "If we fail, we fail together." SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Judith Mills has a simple message: if you want people to listen to them and work with you, you have to listen to them. "In order to show respect and build trust and have people take ownership, it helps if you listen to them rather than just tell them what to do." In her session "Can you hear me now? Start Listening Instead", Judith advises against jumping into providing the solution -- something that coaches and leaders sometimes do. By listening, we create a sense of shared ownership and active involvement. More advice from Judith on listening: - When speaking, think about the listener. How are people taking the information provided them? Did you leave out any pertinent information that might help the message land better? - When listening, are we qualifying what we're hearing? Use paraphrases to validate that you heard what they said. - During problem-solving, don't jump to solve the problem. Try to understand what attempts have been made previously. Problem-solving isn't about proving your value. SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Sococo VP of Sales Jack Crozier shares with Agile Amped his experience implementing Agile practices and tools in his department After the company CEO mandated that every department was to be Agile. At first, the sales team being reluctant and skeptical, but what started in fits and starts eventually grew into a robust sales workflow with clearly defined Scrum processes, tools for visualizing work flow, and a foundation of Agile values to guide future growth. Jack provides tips on how to balance work between a CRM (e.g., Salesforce) and a work board (they used Trello), how to balance existing workload with new lead nurturing, as well as how to focus on outcomes (e.g., closing a sale) rather than on activity (e.g., making a phone call). SolutionsIQ's Setarra DeVeaux hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Humans are evolutionarily predisposed to see patterns and make snap decisions based on very little information. The problem is that today's world requires a deeper analysis than most people are willing or can afford to give to very complex problems. Larry Maccherone's session "Going for it on the Fourth Down" is a look into taking calculated business risks and overcoming the cognitive biases and human factors that prevent you from making sound business decisions. In his conference session, Larry also identifies decisions as a kind of forecast of the probability that the choice you decided on will work out better than all the other choices. With this mindset, organizations and individuals can begin to invest in using analyses to make better forecasts (i.e., decisions). SolutionsIQ's Sheila Olds hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Jared Richardson sits down with Agile Amped to talk about the GROWS method, a new Agile methodology that hopes to succeed where some feel that "Agile has failed". Of GROWS, Jared says, "It's not about being Agile, it's about being effective." The basis for this methodology is the 3 Rs: 1. The Rhythm: Getting teams to iteratively produce working software at a regular cadence 2. The Right Vision: Getting alignment between leadership and the development teams. For example, instead of having the PO write stories in isolation, bring a skeleton story to the team and have the team help fill out the rest. 3. The Right Way: Building quality into the code using Agile technical practices SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Often conflict is viewed as something to avoid at all costs. But don't do that because the conflict isn't going to resolve itself just because you ignore it. Besides, "sometimes conflict is a good thing" -- it can lead to positive and productive growth, or resolution of a standing problem. Because you can't avoid conflict, you have to have constructs for navigating through them. SolutionsIQ's Roy Maines shares some patterns for determining the root cause of the problem, taken from his session at Southern Fried Agile 2016, "Navigating Conflict with Teams". He also shares some techniques and perspectives for how to resolve conflict and be more self-aware about how we each, often unknowingly, contribute to it through our actions and words. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Until recently, the concept of Agile data warehousing was ludicrous. Even today there has been a lot of resistance and minimal exposure to Agile in that industry, despite the need for data warehousing processes to innovate, if only to improve their cycle time. But Kent Graziano of Snowflake Computing has seen a shift in the last two years thanks to the work his company has done to bring the Agile principles to traditional data warehousing. Most exciting are the new techniques in Agile data engineering and modeling, Snowflake's "cloud data warehousing as a service" and its dynamic sizing and cost to address real-world problems in real time. Agile data warehousing is possible today because of enabling technology like Snowflake's, which sees queries of petabytes of data daily. The question isn't so much about the technology anymore, but more about whether large organizations are ready for the cloud. This is Kent's second visit with Agile Amped. See his first appearance here: http://www.solutionsiq.com/resources/... SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Michael Patrick Benning sits down with Agile Amped to discuss improving working relationships when dealing with creative/UX teams. In Michael's experience, differences in working processes can give rise to conflicts, especially when some teams have moved toward more Agile, iteration-based processes while others still deliver value using waterfall. Michael two examples of UX teams burdened with legacy processes: legacy approval processes (e.g., a simple request necessitating approval by five levels of management) and legacy testing processes. He also highlights for viewers what they missed in his session "Balancing Order and Chaos". SolutionsIQ's Sheila Olds hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

After testing the waters of accounting and standup comedy, Kupe Kupersmith of B2T Training finally found his calling by combining two of his passions: improv and helping teams be better. As with improv, life has no scripts: "you have to adapt... and be a good listener," says Kupe. When you provide an environment for good, positive communication, the fun happens naturally! Some key skills for using improv in teams: engaged listening and keeping an open mind. One of Kupe's favorite scripts is "Yes, and..." which is geared toward building constructive, rather than destructive, communication. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Tom Cooper has learned through the years that connecting with people is key to building the trust that makes a good working relationship. For years, Tom focused on improving his technical skills but not necessarily his interpersonal skills. When he diverted some energy to connecting better with people, he saw huge improvements in his productivity. This influenced to create the "4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader", a rubric to help techy-types improve their interpersonal skills and influence over others: 1. Individual: What can I do with my own two hands? 2. Team member: How can I work better within my team? 3. Team leader: How do I develop teams? 4. Team builder: How do I develop leaders who create teams who work well as teams? Tom encourages tech geeks to ask themselves, "Where are you on the four levels? And what can you do to expand your definition of success?" SolutionsIQ's Setarra DeVeaux hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

What do cows and trains have in common? They're both on the Kanban board that Sarah Scott uses to visualize the SAFe implementation at Northwestern Mutual. Sarah walks us through the visualization method they use to track progress of their SAFe implementation, which they use Agile-Lean practices and values to execute on the plan. The team calls their visualization tool a "cow board" rather than a Kanban board because of a funny if somewhat morbid occurrence from early in Northwestern Mutual's history, which taught the then-president a valuable lesson on thinking outside the box. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Dave Rush, Accenture Managing Consultant and Transformation Agent, is passionate about putting an end to projects, because as Dave puts is, "Projects are dead... because by their nature they have a start and end... and a goal to deliver some unique thing." But in Agile work is always flowing, so it makes more sense to think in terms of product life cycles. Moreover, it's time for businesses to think in terms of funneling work to long-lived, high-performance teams. Projects are constantly bringing together stars who have never worked together and, as soon as they get the hang of collaborating, the team is blown apart and the project process starts all over again. In Agile and SAFe, you want high-performance teams who are highly collaborative and practice collective ownership. To make that work in a business context, says Dave, you have to "fund the people and the trains and keep them stable and bring the work to them." Dave also shares his thoughts on why the English national team can never win. SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Teams often lose sight of the business outcomes as they write stories and features in "technicalese", which external users may not be able to comprehend. SPC Stuart Perron thinks that PI objectives are a great way to keep the focus on the results in user language, so they can get quick feedback. Even before the work on the stories begins, stakeholders can rate the value of the completed story or feature. Then again when the story is completed, the team can share the true results and have the stakeholders rate its value, which may be more or less than predicted. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Joe Vallone has a powerful message for enterprise leaders -- that includes managers, directors, VPs and executives. When it comes to executives participating in the transformation, Joe says, "responsibility cannot be delegated... Success or failure of an Agile transformation doesn't belong to coaches... or to individual teams... Leaders need to take accountability and responsibility for this change." Joe invokes Kotter's Acceler8 change management model, saying that his focus has been on step 2: building a guiding coalition. But sometimes leaders are just too busy... An economics geek, Joe suggests starting with just 1% of their available time to start out doing Agile, creating backlogs and experiencing the process--then building on that. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

SPCT Dwayne Stroman has a simple but compelling message: Culture is at the foundation of your transformation success--or failure. According to Dwayne, SAFe is a spotlight will shed light on the dark corners, the culture barriers that impedes communication. To change the culture, you have to create a plan. Using the same dedication to creating good products, "we're developing people, we're developing a culture." (Plate stacking and silverware clanging in the background are a *feature* of this live recording experience!) SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Michael Stump is the Managing Director for the EMEA regions for Scaled Agile. He shares his experiences using a nifty group activity in value stream workshops to help attendees understand their true enterprise objectives by answering three key questions: 1. What is the objective? 2. How do you measure it? 3. How do you communicate the results? This exercise improves alignment around objectives and defining baseline and success metrics. Michael also shares his appreciation for SAFe partners who are in the business of implementing the framework in the real world and providing useful data that can be used in future improvements. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

SAFe Fellow Richard Knaster is here at SAFe Summit with Agile Amped in Denver to talk about the power of Value Streams, which have their own new layer in SAFe 4.0. He says it's a common antipattern that companies add a SAFe program on top of traditional waterfall methods. This is a huge opportunity for them to reduce lead time from concept to cash by looking for waste throughout the whole process. But identifying value streams identification isn't enough; you also have to ensure that the value is actually flowing all the way through. Richard also advocates for building quality into the software, through testing, rather than leaving it to be figured out just before release, as is typically the case in waterfall projects. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

What does BPUF and vacations have in common? According to Vikas Kapila, it's better to plan a little (for example, purchasing a plane ticket to Hawaii) then make incremental additions along the way, rather than to plan the entire experience (hotel, rental car, activities, food, etc.) up front without even making the first small commitment. Vikas uses this analogy and a handful of others to characterize the differences between a traditional mindset and a more modern, Lean-Agile mindset. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

SPCT4 Gillian Clark shares an experience with Agile Amped about inadvertently discovering a way to distill SAFe down to the bare bones so that teams can focus solely on executing. This was particularly helpful in a recent engagement that Gillian worked on at a New Zealand-based agritech firm who needed to execute a major overall of their herd management software before a hard deadline. Since the company didn't have time as a luxury, they had a laser focus on executing against a single backlog of prioritized features, aligning the cadence of their Agile teams and forcing their PMs to pull from a single budgeting pool. The result was a successful execution by the predetermined deadline. Little did Gillian and her colleagues know that they were using, basically, Essential SAFe. (We're live at SAFe Summit 2016, so background noise is part of the live experience!) SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Steve Mayner puts it well when he says that "just about everything in the federal government is very big". He discusses his work with implementing SAFe with the government as an Agile Practice Director. Scaling, understandably, was an issue. This was their third attempt to transform from a traditional mainframe to a modern architecture. After two failures and $3.2 billion spent with zero value, the third initiative, with a $436 million cap and three years to complete, finally succeeded--in large part due to the changes in their approach. Since failure was not an option, they had to be more open minded about their options, including looking into Agile and SAFe. Possibly most pivotal to their success was the close collaboration between two very senior leaders (one from business, one from IT): they were at every meeting, engaged, listening, providing guidance and listening to impediments that needed to be resolved at a higher level. They provided an environment conducive to change. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Pete Rim, Continuous Delivery Agile Coach at Cisco, sits down with Agile Amped to share his recent successes with wider adoption of SAFe and Agile, including 90% improvement in speed (from development to business stakeholders) without losing quality -- improving productivity by 32% across a population of 15,000+ folks. Having begun as a waterfall shop, Cisco is making strides toward organization-wide Agility, now considering such concepts as improving Agile career paths and portfolio management. SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Robert Mahler of Tata Consulting Services (TCS) shares with Agile Amped his thoughts on and experience with Agile transformations and SAFe. In his experience Robert has learned that grassroots transformations without executive buy in don't work. If the C level is not interested, your transformation is going to fail. TCS has integrated SAFe into their approach to effecting organizational change and transformations, using SAFe to help them transform to the SAFe model. Robert also commiserates with those working to effect change in highly regulated industries and with everyone who has problems getting financial and business buy-in from clients. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell and Howard Johnson discuss a recent enterprise Agile transformation that Howard led previously in order to improve the organization's time to market and accelerate change adoption. Howard was instrumental in starting the transformation, which eventually became a "large organizational call-to-arms", from the IT side. By becoming Agile, IT was able to achieve great gains, whereas the business side was not, because Agile didn't obviously cater to the latter's needs. "The business team believed it was IT language... and they didn't understand what Agile meant to business practitioners." Howard shares some key learnings from his experience, including a couple antipatterns. (Mind the clanging halfway through.) SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Robert Mahler of Tata Consulting Services (TCS) shares with Agile Amped his thoughts on and experience with Agile transformations and SAFe. In his experience Robert has learned that grassroots transformations without executive buy in don't work. If the C level is not interested, your transformation is going to fail. TCS has integrated SAFe into their approach to effecting organizational change and transformations, using SAFe to help them transform to the SAFe model. Robert also commiserates with those working to effect change in highly regulated industries and with everyone who has problems getting financial and business buy-in from clients. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Sandra Johnson is a Release Train Engineer in the healthcare-IT industry. She started as a waterfall PM a few years and jumped at the opportunity to become a ScrumMaster in her company's SAFe implementation when she realized "there needed to be an easier way to get things done." She is appreciative of the coaching and guidance that Agile Amped host and SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost provided her years ago. Today she attributes a large part of the success to having buy-in from the leadership level (from the VP level down). Executives attend team training sessions and happily finance the entire transformation. Susan also shares how she has brought the fun back into demos, which can get boring. Susan collaborated with other SMs to retool the entire demo experience, based on what POs decided were the most valuable outcomes from the ceremony. The working group tapped into their own talents (e.g., audio-visual experience) as well as the personalities of their team members to make it interesting, for example through role play or skits. If Susan had advice for new ScrumMasters, it would be to grow some thick skin and to encourage people bringing problems to also come ready with possible solutions. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Certification Program Manager Susan Farago is new to Scaled Agile, but she's been in the certification and credentialing industry for almost two decades. Susan works to create certification programs to train people and "also measure what they know", especially when it comes to new offerings like SAFe Release Train Engineer certification, a critical role in SAFe implementations. Certification often gets a bad rap because, at the onset, quality (e.g., depth of knowledge) isn't always a focus. But Susan argues, in recent years, "we've gotten a lot smarter about what we're testing, and how." Even so, training and certification for hardware and software are much easier to do -- not so with human behavior, which can be "squishy and messy". SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

SAFe Fellow and principal consultant Inbar Oren is excited to announce the new SAFe ScrumMaster course and certification. Of importance for SAFe ScrumMasters to understand are the 10 Essential Elements of SAFe. Miss these and you won't get your results and, Inbar reminds us, "the point isn't to do SAFe, the point is to get your business results." One of the most commonly overlooked elements of SAFe is PI Planning. Another one is leadership training. Inbar advocates for starting training of change agents, executives and leaders early in the transformation -- "otherwise they will hamper the transformation because they don't understand what is critical and what isn't." To this end, organizational change management is crucial for Agile transformations to work, and Inbar shares his thoughts on how to embed OCM in SAFe implementations. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

"HR is the key to bringing Agility to an enterprise level. If we don't fix our HR approach, we cannot a truly Agile organization." That's what Fabiola Eyholzer, CEO of Just Leading Solutions, shares with Agile Amped at the SAFe Summit 2016. Fabiola has 16 years of experience in human resources and applies her expertise and passion to the task of "bringing HR into the 21st century". How? With Lean-Agile practices and values. According to Fabiola, performance management needs to be rebooted to address today's concerns, such as "How do we recruit for Agile teams? How do we build careers in Agile organizations?" Recently, Fabiola collaborated with SAFe founder Dean Leffingwell to pen a white paper called "Agile HR with SAFe". With Agile Amped, she touches on the first of the 6 key themes for Agile HR, which are: 1. Embrace the new talent contract 2. Foster continuous engagement 3. Hire for attitude and cultural fit 4. Move to iterative performance flow 5. Take the issue of money off the table 6. Support impactful learning and growth Source: scaledagileframework SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Alex Yakyma, SAFe Fellow and principal consultant, stops by Agile Amped to talk about his three talks at this year's SAFe Summit: 1. "Advances in DevOps with SAFe" 2. "Applying SAFe to Large and Complex Value Streams" 3. "Lean-Agile Development for Large Enterprises: Adding Hardware to the Mix" Alex also encourages organizations not to lock themselves down "to early decisions that will inevitably be wrong". Lean practices can help orgs "find the middle ground" between planning big upfront and no upfront thinking at all. The author discusses his book "The Rollout", a narrative that uses an Agile Release Train launch as a vehicle for understanding SAFe better, before sharing that they all already working on the next version of SAFe, 4.1--but don't freak out: it's meant to be "additive" rather than a full revamp. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

How would our education system be different using agile principles and values? In this InDepth edition, our conversation focuses around the American School in Leysin, Switzerland, and their experiments over the past 3 yrs in Agile in Education. My guests are Paul Magnuson ( Director of Curriculum & Director of the Middle School) and Bill Tihen ( Director of IT, Teacher, and runs the Makers Space ) Empowering students, making learning visible, and creating life long learners are goals for Paul and Bill as they lead this movement at Leysin. You can find Paul and Bill and the Leysin School at https://www.las.ch/ Special thanks to John Miller for introducing me, and making this conversation possible. you can find John on Twitter at @agileschools The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

The journey to become a CST is a long and rewarding one. In this episode, I get to discuss Karim Harbott's journey to becoming a CST just 2 days after he found out he had received the certification. Richard Cheng is a CST and a volunteer on the Trainer Approval Committee ( TAC) . He shares his side of the journey and what the TAC is looking for, some tips, and encouragement. One story, two perspectives. It should be interesting. The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

How does a large enterprise organization keep up, much less lead? Disruptive Innovation changes the landscape of products, and companies should want to be on the delivering end of this instead of the receiving end. Many companies focus on Sustaining Innovation, but if they really want to be leaders in their product offerings, they should be investing in Disruptive innovation. Jeff explains what is not working, and what does, and gives some great examples of success. He lays out a model he calls " Innovation Colony" and why he believes this should be a focus. The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Empowerment sounds like a good thing - right? What Alan is sharing is that this isn't enough. We talk through a leader/follower spectrum and identify different styles of leadership, and the types of followers that they help create. Alan makes a strong case for the manager to be a catalyst that inspires co-leaders. If you are a manager ( in almost any capacity/environment) this discussion should provide you value. How you lead, helps create behaviors in those you lead. The slides that were mentioned in this podcast can be found here The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Technology is built by people all over the world. Keeping them working as a team is one of Mark's specialties. Mark really knows distributed agile, with over 30 yrs in the software and coaching space. He has spent nearly the last 3 in a 100% distributed environment. On this InDepth distributed podcast, Mark talks about the different types of distributed teams, and offers tips for keeping people engaged. We talk a bit on the Agile Manifesto and how it still applies, plus he does give some sage advise on the tools we use to connect. If you have people working in multiple locations, this is the interview you should not miss. The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

In his Agile2016 session "The Technical Debt Trap", Doc Norton takes all the way back to the metaphor that started it all. Doc says Ward Cunningham coined the term "technical debt" not as shorthand for lousy code but for clean code implemented with your current understanding of the requirements and covered with tests. In short, "technical debt" isn't code that you intend to clean up later: it's clean code created when the dev's knowledge is impartial that the dev can then easily refactor when they learn more about the problem. The danger with the current meaning of technical debt is that the term is benign enough that we don't give it enough attention. "In a great extent, we're using the metaphor to abdicate our own professional responsibility..." Things that teams can start doing now: create debt stories and discuss with the business what the real value of that debt is. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Scrum.org CEO and Product Owner Dave West has come a long way from being a RUP Product Manager to where he is today. After realizing RUP wasn't helping developers or enabling them to build great software, Dave took a Scrum class where a light bulb went off. He saw that if you gave a team enough safety, the right problems to solve, access to the right people and some discipline in the form of XP practices (refactoring, continuous integration, etc.), you can get generate massive amounts of value. Scrum turns 21 in 2016, so what do the next twenty years look like? Dave says some of it centers on scaling product delivery, using evidence-based measurements (EBM) (i.e., value, release frequency and innovation), and actually getting to done. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

The Agile Mindset. We've all heard that term, but what does it mean? What effects can it have on an organization if they are just adopting the frameworks without the mindsets? Ken Rubin and I spend this episode discussing the Agile Mindset. He shares how it effects delivering working software in companies, how he uses it in his family, and even as an angel investor in how it helps him make decisions on who ( and who not) to fund. Ken also shares his unique "Colonel Klink" test (from Hogan's Heroes) to help determine if someone has and agile mindset or not. About Agile Amped: The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

David Bernstein, author of the book "Beyond Legacy Code: Nine Practices to Extend the Life (and Value) of Your Software", stops by Agile Amped to educate us on "What makes great developers great?" While developers are generally thought of as being analytical, dividing and separating things apart, David says, "The great developers that I know are also good at integrating." He adds that, while many devs focus intensely on writing code, "what we really want to do is create implementations of intent." David's book is about making code maintainable and understandable, helping you see connections between processes in the code so you can remove redundancy. The importance of simplicity and elegance in the code becomes obvious when you start to scale enterprise software with millions of lines of code, where a single change can cause a domino effect of broken code. In order to keep code simple, David advocates for treating programming primarily as a way to communicate intent to another human (including your future self) and secondarily as a way to get the computer to do what you want. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Maaret Pyhäjärvi is a tester and Llewellyn Falco is a developer, and they have been pair-programming wrong... or have they? They call it strong-style pairing. It's common in pairing for the one with the idea to drive, grabbing the keyboard and running with their idea. In other words, the person with the idea is the driver, while their pair is the navigator. But if you don't know where the driver is going, you can't navigate. Strong-style is kind of a role reversal where the person with the idea lets their pair drive and instead takes on the navigator role. This way both people in the pair actively contribute. The problem with the traditional driver-navigator model is that the "navigator" doesn't have anything to do if the driver is also the ideator. The navigator can get bored or disengaged. What's more is that strong-style pairing can help pairs build trust more quickly and to help each other with new dev tricks and techniques. This concept can also be used in Mob Programming. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Scott Ambler literally wrote the book on the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework. As Scott says, "Disciplined Agile is all about giving people choices and explicitly sharing the decision points that you're at in Agile projects and IT efforts in general." In addition to DAD, Scott also talks about his Agile2016 session on "The Agile Database Techniques Stack: Bridging the Agile/Data Cultural Divide". Without Agile database development, Agile wouldn't be possible. Yet despite efforts to realize database testing, refactoring and other Agile practices, the data community is still working with a traditional mindset. Data warehousing is typically slow and risky, accustomed to being bottleneck for the rest of the org. Scott also sounds off on microservices, too many technology stacks, and COBOL as a still viable dev language career-wise. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Ellen Gottesdiener, CEO and founder of EBG Consulting, says that, while teams are pretty good today at delivery, there's room for improvement in the "discovery" department "so we can make sure we're making the right stuff that we're feeding to the delivery team." In her Agile2016 Stalwart session, Ellen fielded many questions about product management and Product Ownership. Says Ellen, "We're moving into the age of 'product'" where the value is the product, not the project. "Product Management is a broader discipline dedicated to the care and feeding of the entire lifecycle of the product (not project), from inception to decline." Ellen also has a wakeup call for the Agile community: "We need to make sure we're building the right product and building it right. We have to focus on the discipline around product management using Agile because that's where the value's from." SolutionsIQ's Mike Alexander hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

"Coaching can be a very lonely role, because you're the one dealing with the dysfunctions," said Craig Smith, an Agile coach from Brisbane, Australia. For this reason and many others, Craig set out to try to improve the overall coaching experience. Craig was collaborating with a colleague on this one night when he saw an episode of Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares". Craig was instantly struck by Gordon's "coaching" style, and the gears went to work. In his Agile2016 session "Coaching Nightmares: Insights We Can Learn from Gordon Ramsay", Craig shows snippets of Gordon Ramsay at work in the kitchen and asks participants, "What can we learn from this? As a coach, what would I do?" One of the big things about Ramsay's style is that he calls it like it is because he has no stake in the game. However, coaches may resist the urge to do that, maybe because they are tied to the company or are working for a consultancy that would rather they not. But, Craig says, "In order to get people to really change, we need to call it [like it is]." SolutionsIQ's Mike Alexander hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Agile transformation is the job of managers. Not "A" job, but " THE" job in this new world paradigm. Mick shares with us theincredibly important role of managers in an agile environment and how many are currentlyfailing. He offers actionable tips for managers that may find themselveswondering about their new role, and how to succeed. And according to Mick, sometimes the role of the manager is to be a sh*t umbrella. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community throughcompelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas.Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Ampedoffers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates,subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes,http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like:http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Everyone has baggage, and everyone lets that baggage affect their interactions with others through the stereotypes, biases and judgments that they make, often at a subconscious level. Natalie Warnert spoke on bias in the Agile workplace in her Agile2016 session "Objectivity or Subjectivity: Owning Your Own Bias and Interactions". The thrust is to get people to recognize that they have personal biases as well as biases fueled by societal stereotypes, and then to get them to understand how to keep those biases and judgments in check. This is especially powerful for leaders who have to model the behavior they want to see in others. By enhancing their own self-awareness, leaders can understand how their own personal biases are affecting their interactions with their reports. Says Natalie, "We have the right as humans to think whatever we want... [But] we also want to be able to catch ourselves in the act and say, 'How are these things influencing my interactions in either a positive or negative way?'" Mandy Ross from Sococo, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Eric Willeke shares an account of his experience working with CA Technologies (formally Rally) where he discovered that limiting team WIP is only so useful when feature and strategy WIP aren't also coordinated. After working hard to figure out how to help his teams manage their WIP and deliver near-perfectly, Eric found that there was almost no change in the system; the same problems existed. Looking at a burndown chart of work performed by 47 teams, Eric thought it looked almost perfect--and yet the features delivered and accepted were flat. He found that while focus at the story level was great, focus at the feature level was terrible, and found the same case at the strategy level (which features to build). Eric's session at Agile2016 "WIP: The Tragedy Continues" centered around his experiences. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Pete Behrens from Trail Ridge Consulting is bringing his passion for Agile to leadership. He recognizes that, while the ScrumMaster is responsible for identifying and removing impediments, it's so often the case that the SM doesn't have the power to actually remove the impediments: only leadership can do it. Leadership is a key factor in the success of any organization but, when the teams have a desire to be Agile and the C suite want to transform to Agile, it's the leadership and management in the middle that have the least direction. One thing that's important to Peter: replacing bad habits with good ones. "We've got to give leaders the positive message... These are the behaviors you should be doing, not just what to stop doing." He also wants to create an Agile standard for leaders: "The Scrum Alliance has created the gold standard for [being] a certified ScrumMaster or Product Owner. We're trying to create that same standard for leaders." SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Microservices are all the rage now, and monolithic applications ("monoliths") are old school. So it makes perfect sense to ditch the monoliths completely and go straight for microservices, right? Not to Mike Gehard, it doesn't, especially for new projects. A software engineer at Pivotal, Mike says that for startups who don't yet know what their business is, microservices may box them in unnecessarily. He advocates for starting with a monolith before moving to microservices--in three easy steps (at least MIke makes them seem easy). The assumption going into the monolith, however, is that it's structured in such a way that moving over to microservices in the future is feasible and easy. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Markus Silpala is all about bringing the learning and growth that Agile dev teams have experienced over the past decade into the IT and infrastructure part of the equation. His session at Agile2016 was called "Making Infrastructure as Awesome as Agile Software". Markus experienced first hand why bringing the infrastructure into the Agile development workflow is so difficult. When the team he was working with got a taste of the Ops side of the release, they decided they didn't want any part of it and was hoping another team could do it. In other words, this Agile team wanted to re-instantiate a silo--but for legitimate reasons, some of which Markus covered: DevOps tooling isn't as developed and the domain of skill for DevOps adds a whole new level of complexity to developing. Markus goes on to touch on the 3 types of Agile: Process Agile, Technical Agile and Mindset Agile. Process is just the entry point and naturally arises when you grok Technical and Mindset Agile well. But people tend to get stuck on Process Agile because it's easier to walk through the paces and doesn't really require any internalization. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

In this in depth audio only podcast, we get to visit with Jeff Lopez-Stuit. Jeff coaches in far away places and with companies that build products on a global scale. Jeff helps bust a few of the myths we have about coaching in other cultures, the adoption of agile in very hierarchical societies, and shares technics to coaching approaches with people from different backgrounds. He even shares some tips for those coaches that may be taking their very first assignment to coach in a foreign land. Hint: We are all very much the same. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook