Agile for Humans with Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller

Todd and Ryan discuss how to make Scrum training effective long-term, even after the training. Training can be like injecting steroids into a team, which can wear off over time. They discuss ways they have tried to address this issue, including following up with newsletters and maintaining relationships with students beyond the training. They also mention the importance of fostering community and...

Todd and Ryan discuss using Scrum with data science teams in this video. They acknowledge that data teams may not always have a tangible or usable product by the end of a Sprint. However, they suggest that focusing on essential slices of work and including visual components can make the process more effective. They emphasized the importance of finding ways to enable conversation with stakeholders...

FIXING YOUR AGILE METRICS - INTRODUCTION TO TIME TO MARKET - CYCLE TIME ⏩ Join Ryan and Todd for a Scrum.org course: https://buytickets.at/agileforhumansllc Todd and Ryan also co-authored a book - Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems. 👉 Buy Fixing Your Scrum at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3BMvkcX ✅Subscribe to our Channel to learn more about Agile, Scrum, and Kanban: http...

The video discusses whether shorter sprints can help a scrum team learn faster. Ryan and Todd explain that sprint length is a planning horizon and there is no right or wrong sprint length. The length of the sprint should be decided by the team and organization, based on factors such as how long they can go without feedback from customers and the stability of the product backlog. Starting with shor...

The video discusses essential questions for Scrum Masters to consider when starting with Evidence-Based Management (EBM). EBM involves goals, evidence, and empiricism. The first step is to ensure precise and transparent goals and assess their alignment. Next, measuring the right things, such as unrealized value, current value, time to market, and ability to innovate, is essential. The Scrum Master...

The video discusses dealing with a team with a "we finish when we finish" mentality and consistently carries over work items from one sprint to the next. Todd and Ryan suggest looking at the aging of work items and discussing this in the daily scrum to help identify if the team is carrying over work that is not being done or if it's an ongoing problem. They also emphasize the importance of staying...

Todd and Ryan believe that the potential of new tools, such as ChatGPT apps, to replace the role of a scrum master in facilitating and guiding teams is limited. Ryan, who has been working with ChatGPT, believes that while the AI-powered tool is impressive, it is not yet advanced enough to fully take over the role of a human scrum master. He also thinks that the interactions and collaborations betw...

The video is about strategies for helping executives with trouble articulating their goals. Todd and Ryan suggest asking executives open-ended questions about what is possible and what they expect to see once specific work is completed. It's important to tread lightly and warmly into the conversation and ensure that it empowers the executive. The alignment and strategy of goals are also essential...

The video concerns right-sizing work in Scrum without historical data or cycle time. Todd and Ryan suggest that, in the absence of data, one should aim to complete product backlog items within half the sprint or less and focus on having small, well-refined stories that are tightly defined and understood. Ryan also notes that data can be unreliable if the team composition, product backlog, or proje...

Todd and Ryan discuss what components should be included in a year-end report or metrics for a Scrum team. They suggest using the Evidence-Based Management (EBM) framework and focusing on key value areas such as time to market, ability to innovate, current value, and unrealized value. They also discuss how the responsibility for creating such reports is shared among the team, not solely by the Scr...

The video discusses the use of Scrum in regulated environments and how it can be helpful in complex product development. While specific industry regulations may need to be considered, the framework of Scrum can still be applied to uncover better ways of doing things. Todd and Ryan give an example of how they identified and eliminated a labor-intensive process that was not tied to any regulations....

In this video, Ryan and Todd discuss how to deal with the culture of busyness in organizations. They talk about the concept of context switching, where people are assigned multiple tasks, but can't do any of them well due to being too busy. They suggest making the busyness transparent and measuring its impact to show that it is not only disruptive to people but also costly. They recommend making t...

Todd and Ryan discuss using Scrum with data science teams in this video. They acknowledge that data teams may not always have a tangible or usable product by the end of a Sprint. However, they suggest that focusing on essential slices of work and including visual components can make the process more effective. They emphasized the importance of finding ways to enable conversation with stakeholders...

Todd and Ryan discuss how to make Scrum training effective long-term, even after the training. Training can be like injecting steroids into a team, which can wear off over time. They discuss ways they have tried to address this issue, including following up with newsletters and maintaining relationships with students beyond the training. They also mention the importance of fostering community and...

The video discusses how to write a good Sprint goal in Scrum. Ryan and Todd suggest avoiding the use of "and," "or," commas, and ticket numbers in Sprint goals. They also address whether it's fine to have Product Backlog Items (PBIs) that are not directly related to the Sprint goal, and conclude that it is acceptable as long as the work tied to the Sprint goal is given priority. Leave us a comment...

In this video, Ryan and Todd discuss the importance of having a clear Sprint goal in Scrum teams. While it is common for teams not to have a Sprint goal, lacking a goal suggests a lack of alignment on higher-level goals, such as a product or a strategic goal. The speaker suggests defining a product goal and creating a clear, concise, concrete step towards achieving it in the Sprint. Clear goals ar...

FIXING YOUR AGILE METRICS - INTRODUCTION TO TIME TO MARKET - THROUGHPUT ⏩ Join Ryan and Todd for a Scrum.org course: https://buytickets.at/agileforhumansllc Todd and Ryan also co-authored a book - Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems. 👉 Buy Fixing Your Scrum at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3BMvkcX ✅Subscribe to our Channel to learn more about Agile, Scrum, and Kanban: http...

Ryan and Todd discuss whether it is acceptable for Scrum teams to work overtime to reach a Sprint goal. They believe working overtime can be okay if the Scrum Team misses something significant during Sprint Planning. However, it should not become a regular occurrence, as studies have shown that overtime can negatively impact quality and morale. They suggest that if overtime becomes excessive, the...

Todd and Ryan are asked how to coach a new Product Owner without knowledge of Scrum. They recommend sending the Product Owner to their free Scrum Framework 101 course on YouTube to get a good grounding in Scrum. Once the Product Owner has learned the mechanics of Scrum, the speaker suggests discussing how every aspect of Scrum can help the Product Owner develop, create, release, and turn a profit...

Todd and Ryan suggest that in a heavily regulated environment such as defense, automation of testing and validation can help increase agility. They also recommend standardizing processes and inviting compliance and legal teams to scrum events to keep them informed and plan for approvals and phase gates. Todd mentioned that feedback may be delayed in a highly regulated environment, such as building...

Ryan and Todd discuss the potential issues with using the throughput metric in agile development. They express the concern that comparing throughput between teams could lead to manipulation and abuse, just like with velocity and story points. Ryan and Todd suggest that a probabilistic forecast would be a better approach instead of a deterministic forecast. They argue that the community should embr...

Todd, Prateek, and Ryan discuss using flow metrics in the Sprint Retrospective. They mention that flow metrics are usually associated with data analysis and may not be immediately relevant to team improvement. Still, they believe that these metrics could be helpful in this context. They discuss the use of cycle time, throughput, item aging, and WIP limits and how they could be used to monitor prog...

Todd and Ryan discuss aligning evidence-based management (EBM) goals with quarterly planning. They suggest that goals should live outside the boundaries of quarterly planning but that placing targets can still motivate them. They also mention that in EBM, there are three levels of goals: strategic (long-term), intermediate (near-term), and tactical (short-term). They suggest that intermediate goal...

The video compares the Scrum.org and ProKanban.org classes. The critical difference between the two courses is that the PSK (Professional Scrum with Kanban) includes both Scrum and Kanban concepts, while the Professional Kanban only focuses on Kanban. The AMP (Applying Metrics for Predictability) and PAL-EBM (Evidence-Based Management) are two different frameworks and classes. The AMP focuses on t...

Todd, Prateek, and Ryan discuss using flow metrics in the Sprint Review. The four flow metrics, throughput, cycle time, item work age, and whip limits, are defined at the beginning of the video. The Sprint Review is a collaborative discussion about the product, and stakeholders such as customers, users, buyers, and internal executives are present to assess the value and give feedback. The conversa...