Agile and Project Management - DrunkenPM Radio

The Scrum Guide got an update last November and one of the concepts introduced was the Product Goal. The Scrum Guide says: “The Product Goal describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Scrum Team to plan against. The Product Goal is in the Product Backlog. The rest of the Product Backlog emerges to define “what” will fulfill the Product Goal. "A product is a vehicle...

Christine Converse and Ross Beurmann are back and this time we’re picking up the thread from something that came up during our previous interview. The title of the episode is Resistance to Change and the conversation centers around the problems we face when trying to create change within a team or organization. More specifically, we talk about how you can influence others to change when you have n...

If you'd prefer to watch the video version of this interview you can find it here: https://vimeo.com/517256016 Mark Hodgdon is Product and Project Manager at Aspirent, an Atlanta-based management consulting firm focusing on Data Analytics, Cloud Development, and Project Execution. His role is also often called on to serve as Scrum Master and Product Owner. He also manages and plays in a band and h...

In this very special video episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Jesse Fewell, whose new book Untapped Agility is full of insights, tips, and tactics that you can use to help gain support for your adoption of Agile. Jesse and I go way back. We worked together a lot during the initial phases of getting The Project Management Institute and the Scrum Alliance to talk back in 2009-2010. It was great t...

When it comes to introducing change into an organization you will frequently hear people talk about how critical it is to change the culture. They’ll tell you that nothing will happen until you change the culture. They’ll start quoting Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Culture is definitely a concern, but it is not the ONLY concern. And it is definitely not an excuse for why or...

In this episode, I am joined by my friends Richard Cheng and Karim Harbott for a discussion about Business Agility. Business Agility is something people have been talking about for several years but it is one of those terms that can mean different things to different people. During my conversation with Karim and Richard, we discuss what Business Agility is, why nailing down a definition can be so...

In November of 2020, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber released a new version of the Scrum Guide. The new version of the Guide introduces some important changes to how Scrum works. One specific area that changed was the Scrum Artifacts. In this episode of the podcast, I am joined by my good friend Chris Li. Chris is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and the Founder of SparkPlug Agility. During our co...

Modus Institute recently introduced its new Certification and Accreditation Programs in Lean-Agile Visual Management (LA-VM). This is something they have been working on developing for 12 years. In this episode of the podcast, Jim Benson joins me to discuss Modus’s new offerings. During the interview we discuss Systems Thinking and how it figures into the LA-VM program. Jim also explains why it to...

Coaching people through an Agile transformation is a complicated thing. People within the organization may want the promise they see Agile offering, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to fight against the change every step of the way. Nobody likes change. It’s uncomfortable and scary and it’s sometimes it’s so much easier to just say, “Yes, this is the most uncomfortable chair/torture device...

How do you make the leap from being someone who can deliver a presentation to being someone who can meet a crowd, entertain them and take them someplace where they happen to learn something valuable along the way? I know lots of people who can stand up in front of a room (or share a screen) and get through a topic without saying anything wrong. I know far fewer people who can take a room, offer va...

The 2020 version of the Scrum Guide has been released (https://www.scrumguides.org) and it introduces some subtle, but impactful changes. This update to the document that explains the Scrum Framework as it is defined by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, was introduced during a live event celebrating the 25th anniversary of Scrum. If you’d like to check out a replay of the event, you’ll find a link...

While most of us have spent the past several months struggling to adjust to the new normal of being 100% remote, Molood Ceccarelli has not. In 2016, Molood realized that even though Agile coaches and thought leaders frequently talk about how important it is for all of us to be co-located, most of her work was remote and she’d been able to figure out how to work with agile teams. This realization i...

Johanna Rothman is a force of nature. Every year, in addition to her work teaching, coaching, blogging, and speaking, she writes a book. Well, most years. This year there is a pandemic. Johanna has written five! I think if you are lucky, you can find people in your industry that you look up to, people who inspire you to dig in a little harder and rise. If you are really lucky, you get to meet thes...

When organizations begin adopting Agile, there are a number of business areas outside the teams that also have to change in order to create systems that can support this new way of working. Navigating this is always challenging, but it becomes even tougher when you need to have traditional (waterfall) and Agile work happening concurrently. This episode of the podcast features Ross Beurmann who is...

Q: How do I get a job as a Project Manager, Product Owner, or ScrumMaster if I have no experience? This is a question I get asked almost weekly. People are looking for their first gig or trying to figure out what to say in an interview, or just convince themselves they are qualified to do the job. One of the biggest elements of getting your first gig is understanding how the work you have done can...

In Scrum, everyone is supposed to have one job. You get to be a ScrumMaster, a Product Owner, or a Development Team member. Each team member of the Scrum Team is supposed to be able to totally focus on the role they play. However, in many organizations, they ask people to play more than one role. You might be SM/PO, SM/Dev, or PO/Dev, or in my case (once upon a time), SM/Project Mgr/BA, and since...

Being a Product Owner is not easy. You are responsible for the success of the product. You have to create enough work to keep up to 9 people busy, stay 2-3 Sprints ahead of them and at the same time, stay completely in sync with the business and constantly be learning more about the customer. It’s a lot. But what happens when you are the PO, and your Manager is spending most of their day acting as...

What do you do when they start asking for cost per point? This issue often arrives wrapped in requests that are pure in their intent and seem to be reasonable requests from the business… How much are we spending each month and how many points are we delivering for that spend? or Since we are now estimating work in User Story Points, we need to be able to determine how much to charge for the work t...

“What advice do you have on structuring sprint planning meetings in an agency setting with different product owners and project teams (when each PM is 'competing' for the same development resources)?" That is the question I got during the Q&A portion of a webinar I did recently for The Bureau of Digital. This is a scenario where you have an agency model approach to the work, so people are spread a...

Practicing Agile at Home with Yvonne Marcus Yvonne Marcus is on a mission to create positive home management solutions for every family and she’s using Agile to do it. In this episode of the Reluctant Agilist, Yvonne and I discuss how and why she began an Agile transformation at home, how it has impacted life for her and her family, and how you can get started bringing Agile practices into your ho...

In this episode of the Reluctant Agilist, you’ll hear the story of how a father helped his son use outcome-based planning to define his personal response to what happened to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter events that followed. Ross Beurmann is a seasoned Agile coach (and a co-worker of mine). His son Tom just graduated from high school. When Tom learned about what happened to George Floyd...

Since the Covid-19 Quarantining began, we’ve all had to adjust to our work-life taking place 100% online. Whether you are working in a traditional environment or in Agile, this change has impacted your teams’ ability to engage, learn, and collaborate online. In this episode of the podcast, I am joined by Braden Cundiff who works in the International Division of McGraw-Hill Education serving in a P...

The transition to Agile is challenging for any organization. It’s even worse when you do not understand the strategic and business reasons behind the change. This is one of the primary reasons so many Agile transformations fail to achieve lasting change. “There is little alignment on what it means to be agile and even less around what it takes to achieve it. Organisations are wasting huge sums of...

This is part 2 of my interview with Tony Johnson from Crosswind PM. In this part of the interview Tony and talk through his recent experience attending a Disciplined Agile Training event held by PMI. We also share our thoughts and opinions on why PMI acquired Disciplined Agile and Flex and how we are expecting that to impact the Project Management community. In the first part of the interview, whi...

One of the results of the health crisis we are currently facing is that large public gatherings are temporarily off the table. No in-person events. Many events have been canceled, some are working out how to move online and some new ones have been specifically created to take place in a virtual setting. The Agile Virtual Summit is taking place on Jun 1-5, 2020. It’s all online and you can earn upw...