Agility Island - for practitioners & coaches in Product Management, Lean, Agile & Scrum

Is there such thing as balancing UX with shipping fast in scrum?  Is there even such thing as shipping fast in scrum?  How can we know what is value when we don't know the end-user?    What happens in each box of the Lean UX canvas?

How can we better deal with complexity in a Kanban footprint? Join me in this short episode to explore how.

In this episode, I go through some field stories regarding story points - why you shouldn't use them and offer alternatives. 

Popular patterns for sizing including "exact" time/cost, relative, right-sizing, and #noestimates . Popular patterns for forecasting include Gantt charts(ugh!), burnup/down charts(hmmm), and probabilistic forecasting(oooo). An emerging trend is with right-sizing and probabilistic forecasting. It's not all sunshine and honey, context matters, and it's dangerous to over-simplify. Let's laser focus o...

Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction   0:22 scrum master vs agile coach  1:46 The conversations you might have as a leader/scrum master/agility coach  3:48 What I expect a scrum master or agility coach to do  10:00 What about a leader?  13:17 Some things to consider stopping Watch the video version of this episode here: https://youtu.be/9n90oOChNQY

Let's focus on non-software - let's consider a people recruitment process as an example.    What does "done" mean? Valuable, useful, and usable in Scrum, whatever the organization/team decides it is.  "When someone's need was met" in Agendashift. Maybe a near to exit stage on a Kanban board...   How is "done" different from acceptance criteria for a Scrum product backlog i...

Product Backlog Refinement is an activity in (single team) Scrum, with supporting events for multi-team Scrum in Nexus and LeSS. Why is it encouraged? Is there something equivalent in Kanban?   0:00 Introduction   0:27 Product backlog refinement in Scrum   8:03 How do we obtain a common understanding   9:06  A nerve centre for discovery   15:00 Optional practices&nbsp...

Projects are artificial constructs to get money to get some work done. Key metric include time, scope, and cost. Products don't have scope. Scrum is for product development and works even better with Lean UX and Kanban as a powerful combination. Should we set up Scrum Teams dedicated to projects?  0:34 What is a project?  1:01 Deciding whether to use Scrum or not  3:17 Problems with...

Daily Flow - what is LeSS and why is it needed?

Are you in an agile team? Does it feel like meeting mania? It doesn't have to be. Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction  0:24 Meetings with agile 2:12 Three questions in the Scrum guide  4:04 The situation to strive for   7:13 Sprint planning  10:15 Product backlog refinement 13:50 Having a chat with key stakeholders Link to YouTube video: https://youtu.be/t99iRz-h2Xs

Daily Flow hosts the amazing Steven Tendon to discuss constraints in knowledge work. This episode is packed with fun anecdotes as well as the story of Herbie.  Join us in discussing Steve's amazing work in his own Tame Flow.  1:48 - Basics of constraints in knowledge work / understanding what is a constraint 2:51 - Story of Herbie 8:53 - Finding the constraint 15:31 - Moving people aroun...

Remember those three annoying questions? Thank goodness they no longer exist in the Scrum guide.   0:00 Introduction   2:05 Five domains to think about when working on problems...  3:49 What to talk about in the daily scrum  5:15 From a flow perspective...  7:58 Getting to know each other   10:57 Answering questions and comments

Nexus is Scrum.org's scaling/de-scaling pattern. It's simple and it's practical.   0:00 Introduction   1:03 The cake metaphor   4:55  A basic Nexus   7:58 Why I like Nexus   10:50 Minimising dependencies   12:49 The Nexus daily scrum   15:47 The 2021 update   18:25 A key distinction between LeSS and Nexus   21:10 Answering questions and comments

Two weeks is the most popular sprint length for Scrum teams, so we should use that right? What if we have multiple teams for the product?

On the Xagility ™ podcast at https://anchor.fm/xagility , Marty Cagan explained his view on product ownership & product management, calling it "CSPO pathology".  Listen to John Coleman's personal opinion on the following:  What does it mean for teams?  What does it mean for entrepreneurial Product Owners? What does it mean for Product Leaders?  What does it mean for trainin...

Prateek Singh is Director, Business Agility at UKG(Ultimate Kronos Group) Speaker, Blogger, and co-host of the fabulous DrunkAgile podcast. DrunkAgile https://youtube.com/channel/UC758reHaPAeEixmCjWIbsOA

intent and Impulse. Why do we do what we do? What is the narrative that sits behind our actions? Understanding the difference between these two terms and their true meaning is a process of reflection and exploration. Two of the fundamentals of personal and professional development. David Nixon’s intent and impulse article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/intent-impulse-david-nixon

Nik Antonelli made John Coleman aware of the expression "take the time it takes so it takes less time"; complexity aside, it's about being able to afford to do it twice when one could have done it properly once. "It takes as long as it takes" is a dead-sure sign that work item aging is not being taken seriously, and it's the slippery slope to expedite-mania.

In another episode, John Coleman talked about "turning off the tap". A few weeks after turning off the tap, work level anxiety can still be high. It can be tempting to re-open the tap before your workload has normalized. Don't.  How often do we pause to walk in nature, to reflect? don't lose that opportunity to finish work that's been in progress for longer than you'd like to admit. sidebar, somet...

Lean UX was co-created by Joshua Seiden and Jeff Gothelf. Scrum and Lean UX were formally combined in recent years, and John Coleman loves this combination. He refers to it as a heat-seeking missile for value. Find out why. 

In Kanban, explicit policies are visible/accessible to Kanban system members.  Implicit policies are assumptions, and they might not be shared assumptions. Let's talk about policies.

Wouldn't know a cycle time scatter plot if it hit you on the head? You're in the right place to look at that and a few other sleep-inducing charts. What a way to start the weekend!

What is Kanban? John Coleman will refer to https://kanbanguides.org.

Water flow is often used as a metaphor for flow in knowledge work. John often uses the expression "turn off the tap" (incoming work). Is he going crazy?

Is the application of Scrum as per the Scrum Guide too prescriptive? Is the Scrum Guide used as a set of laws you need to adhere here to? Should the Scrum Guide rather be treated as a guide that gives the team a starting point but encourages the team to inspect and adapt the framework to better their outcomes?  To request a topic, leave a message at https://anchor.fm/dailyflow/message or What...