73. Virtual Coffee after our Virtual Agile Open Socal
Vic (@AgileCoffee) and Larry (@LarryLawhead) teamed up with Lakshmi Ramaseshan (@LakshmiRamases2) and Professor Hadar Ziv (UCI – Dept of Informatics ) in a virtual coffee shop to discuss the following topics: Did the Agile Open SoCal work as a virtual event? Playing to Your Strengths – Using Strengthsfinder (book) with Teams What is a Value Hypothesis (and why was it following Larry all day?) Creating a Values & Principles Based Culture Please HELP support us by becoming a Patron: patreon.com/agilecoffee Here’s the MIRO board that Lakshmi created for our virtual event: Books and resources mentioned in this episode: Lakshmi’s presentation…
34. Transparency as a Tool to Build Trust
Victor is joined by Dale Ellis (@theDigitalDale) and Larry Lawhead (@LarryLawhead) on a beautiful SoCal morning for Agile and Coffee. In this episode, our Agile heroes discuss: Limits to transperency Project reporting (is the Burndown enough?) Mandated documentation in Agile Project definition phase Getting teams to behave like teams Engaging the non-participative team member Reach out to Vic (@AgileCoffee) on Twitter and use the hashtag #tellAgileCoffee to interact with us on an upcoming episode.
Keeping busy between jobs
Being out of work is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, having long stretches of time to focus thoughts and efforts on pet projects and learning is amazing. With clear vision and consistent effort, one can make tremendous progress in achieving high-value goals. On the other hand, you’re still out of a job. The search could surely be going better – summer vacations really slow down the hiring process – but it’s at least moving, giving me hope that I’ll land in a great spot. And on the plus side, I’d already planned to have some time off…
31. Lean Coffee at the 5Saturdays
Lean Coffee at the 5Saturdays Vic (@AgileCoffee) stops by Dr. Dave’s (@DrCorneliusInfo) 5Saturdays event to introduce lean coffee to a large group of facilitators-in-training. Guests include: Evelyn Crofts, Keith Montgomery, Curtis Gilbert, Seth Silvernail, Jon Jorgensen, Angela Rong Sun, Robbie Smith, Purnima Vaidyanathan, Valarmathy Rangasamy and Joe Dailey. Topics: Planning & executing tasks in the household Velocity-based vs. Capacity-based planning Agile sneak attacks in waterfall environments Showstoppers identified in daily scrum Reflection on day #2 of 5Saturdays’ Train the Facilitator – – – – Coming up in episode 32 – interviews from the 2nd annual Scrum Day San Diego. Further…
25. Agile Planning and User Story Mapping
Vic is joined by Brett Palmer (@brett_palmer) and Larry Lawhead (@LarryLawhead) for a lively morning of Agile and coffee. Today our heroes discuss the following topics: Agile Planning – discussed WSJF and Donald Reinertsen’s book “The Principles of Product Development Flow” User Story Mapping Roles in pair-coaching Servant Leadership AgileGathering.com has the info about our upcoming Agile Coach Camp US West, April 10-12, 2015
Roadmapping with Coffee and Hats
Does your IT organization make a practice of yearly roadmapping? Mine does. The current shop, the previous one, the one before that, and on and on. Just about every technology department I’ve been a part of does some form of yearly roadmapping exercise. The one characteristic that they all share? They’re drudgery. The process of creating a roadmap seems a staple of the yearly business cycle, but that doesn’t mean that it has to suck. I work with technology folks who, independent of the sales pipeline, are asked to list, size and prioritize some set of initiatives that are either wanted…
Capacity Planning worksheet for Scrum teams
[ UPDATE July 2016 – I no longer subscribe completely to the concept of capacity planning, at least to this level of detail. I will keep this post available, but I will not maintain the fancy spreadsheet đ It’s fun to geek out with numbers and formulas, but we could do better having meaningful conversations with our teams. ] The topic of Capacity Planning came up in a recent coffee, and I decided to introduce it to my new team. I just developed a spreadsheet (illustration below) that helps make visible the number of hours that each team member is…
Using an Inception to kick off a project
Agile Inceptions are powerful and fast ways to get a team to internalize a vision. It’s a two-day investment that saves the company months of up-front planning and allows the teams to begin immediately deliver core product functionality. Overview Since mid-2013, I’ve been involved with teams adopting the Agile Inception format used by Pivotal Labs to kick off new projects. I’ve been fortunate to participate in these inception meetings with a couple teams from Pivotal, and I’d like to share my observations on their agenda and process. The inception model is a kickoff strategy that is repeatable and well-vetted. At it’s core,…