Expresso Steam Makers - 10 Minute Daily (sip) Stemulating Information Podcast

It's time to grow up, if you've been doing agile the same way since you started - That's a problem. Using a 5 tier model to measure your continuous improvement:   Level 1 - Ad hoc Agile (Individual/Team) Level 2 - Doing Agile  (Team) (Mindset Shift) Level 3 - Being Agile  (Team/Program) (Basic Metrics/Empowered Teams) Level 4 - Think Agile, High Performing (Team/Program/Portfolio) (Fully Data Driven/Self Healing) Level 5 - Scaling, Alignment, and Optimizing  (Full Culture Shift) Listen and gauge where you are on the maturity Model. Subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss an episode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline007/

Often time people want the Agile Coach to "pick a side",  who's right or who's wrong:  Should all agile teams be smaller than 9 people?  Do we have to have daily stand-ups every day?  Do we have to have a daily stand-up on the day we have retrospectives?  Can we combine the demo and the retrospective? Can we extend our sprint a week if we want?  Can we cancel a sprint or change the beginning and end dates? Can you do scrum without a scrum master?  Can you do scrum without the product owner? Do you have to do story pointing? ... Yes the list goes on (and yes I do have answers for all of those in upcoming episodes)  but first let's be clear there is a lot of leadwa and flexibility but my question is are you able to measure that what you are doing is improving and getting better.   Improvement without measuring is futile.

After listening to this podcast, try to take an honest look at your current environment and company culture and see if you have created Groups of Individual Contributors that work together (and may get along GREAT but don't actually collaborate)  or have you created a TEAMs of people.  Listen and make a list of questions related to your (1) Goals (2) Roles (3) Rules (4)Method (5) Mindset ... and then determine... 'are you all actually "being agile" or just "doing agile".   How can you "Collaborate" well with your customer if you aren't really "collaborating" as a team? Honest Feedback Welcomed.   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline007/

I will be the first to admit Agile Ceremonies can get stale and mundane.   It's important that you don't go the 'lazy' route and just cancel these ceremonies.  Take the time and effort to energize them.   You get out of it, what you put into it.  Put a little thought, planning, creativity, and inspiration into these ceremonies.  Make it a priority and be intentional about getting value from these ceremonies.  They've been around and been a mainstay because at their core is purpose and pay-off.  Often time teams are will and able to cancel these meetings because at the heart of it, they aren't even really teams to begin with....   I'll talk about that more in my NEXT episode ...  Enjoy and please share feedback. If you want to know more about me @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline007/

I'm 100% serious. The hiring of Agile Coaches is on the rise but why spend the money and bring people from outside your organization when you can have someone inside your organization take an Agile class or two?  Even though I'm a very seasoned Agile Coach, I'm not going to tell you that it's not impossible but I do want to give you a little heads-up on what to expect and also how to avoid some common misconceptions.  If you heed these warnings then you may find your intended agile implementation and/or transformation successful and you are welcome to give this podcast credit for it.   I'm eager to hear if anyone has been able to implement agile without coaches?

Those who have been practicing Agile / Scrum before and during the COVID pandemic have had to face a real dilemma of whether you can properly execute Agile especially Scrum with a remote team.   If you can't do it properly then the next question is should you abandon scrum altogether?  Is a half attempt at Scrum done remotely better than no attempt?  What's the alternative to go back to Waterfall?  This isn't just to get into a philosophical debate, it's actually a very real consideration especially as working remotely is highly desirable and now no one wants to go back to 100% in the office.  How do we make sure Agile evolves to fit the NEW NORM? Find out what Agile Veteran Coach with over 30 years, 10 enterprise transformations, and creator of dozens of Transformation Playbooks to help companies build better teams and optimize their outcome,  Jacqueline Sanders-Blackman.

Jacqueline Sanders-Blackman shares insights on the pitfalls, anti-patterns, and missteps of being/doing/going Agile. Check Out The Agile Angst Newsletter - https://conta.cc/3kdc9Rx

Jacqueline Sanders-Blackman share insights on How long does it take realistically to convert from Waterfall to Agile? Also check out our Agile Angst - Ask the Agile Coach On Call - https://conta.cc/3kdc9Rx  

Gherkin approach is a great way to test acceptance criteria and a pre-cursor to the acceptance test and automated test scripts but not a replacement for acceptance criteria. About the host: Jacqueline Sanders-Blackman https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline007/

This episode @jacqueline007 Jacqueline Sanders-Blackman talks about other Backlog Work Items, besides just user stories. Also Check out our Agile Angst - Ask the Agile Coach On Call Newsletter - https://conta.cc/3kdc9Rx    

This episode covers Scrum; the roles, the artifacts, ceremonies, and rules. 

The 4 Ceremonies You Always hear about - Daily Stand Up - Sprint Review - Sprint Planning - Sprint Retrospective Are reinforced by 2 Additional Ceremonies - Backlog Refinement (Taking Raw stories and doing the prework and research to get them ready for your planning ceremony) - Scrum of Scrum (Cross Team Coordination of Shared Services) Seeing these as ceremonies will help insure you do them on a regular cadence and on a consistent basis.  

This episode covers the Agile Manifesto and is a review of it to keep us fresh on its terms and ideas.  

Agile = Agility + Flexibility + Predictability.    Our world is forcing every industry, every business (small and large) to be more agile, flexible and to be able to pivot often.  In some cases, business and teams have to look at their capacity on a day-by-day basis to determine their goals for the day.   In the IT industry, we've seen the rate of change get faster and faster with each innovation and new technology.  As one who has studied the evolution and rapid transition, I want to share my 15 years of lesson learned about process improvement, frameworks and guidelines.  Even though we know rigid frameworks don't work in a rapidly changing environment, it doesn't mean we can resort to managed or unmanaged chaos.

This episode covers how to run a story run workshop.

This episode covers who's wring the user story or who should be wring it.

This episode covers "So That" Statements or Purpose Statements or the Why. The question that should be asked is so what if we don't do this story what will we be lacking. 

Using Business Value Points (BVP) for User Stories to help define scope, help prioritize and make planning smoother. BVP can use the same framework as Story Points (i.e. a modified Fibonacci Sequence). For example: BVP 13 - Will provide a definite and significant tangible ROI (increase revenue, transactions, generate repeat customers) or is a Compliance Item which will result in Penalties if not done (Loss of Revenue) BVP 8 -  Will provide some ROI (either a small - medium or is purely speculative) BVP 5 - Is Necessary Cost of Doing Business but no Significant ROI BVP 3 - Definitely will Delight the Customer but Low ROI BVP 1  - Nice to Have; May Delight the Customer but Little to No ROI  

Learn the purpose and intent of Acceptance Criteria.  Get tips on how to separate and keep your Acceptance Criteria from being: (a) a list of tasks (b) too technical (c) a test script And find out if the Gherkin Method (Given, When, Then) is right for your teams.    

Hear about my journey for the last 30 years and my quest to understand the best way to healthy, sustainable approaches to software development.  And how I help empower each of my clients to create a relentless, continuous improvement strategy. Also connect with me on Linkedin.  I would love to know if you've listened to one of our episodes and if it's helped you. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline007/