Agile Weekly Podcast

Jade Meskill, Roy van de Water, Derek Neighbors and Drew LeSueur talk about what vision means to the team. There's always money in the banana stand Linked to purpose Why it's so important Shared vision unifies the team Decision making is easier with vision Vision plus implementation is magic Cost of misalignment

Jade Meskill, Roy van de Water, Chris Coneybeer and Derek Neighbors talk about the cost of interruptions to teams and organizations. What is an interruption? Culture of interruptions How does it effect prioritization? Planning impossibilities It has to be on fire to get done It kills teams Poor decision making It's contagious Loss of innovation Balloons for everyone Solutions

Clayton Lengel-Zigich, Derek Neighbors, Roy van de Water, Michael Vizdos and Jade Meskill talk about the cost of change when implementing Agile in an organization. Individual, Team, Organization Human Resource priorities Rate of change Performance reviews Emotional response Personnel turnover Conflict Champions

Clayton Lengel-Zigich, Derek Neighbors, Roy vandeWater and Drew LeSueur talk about the role of Product Owners. Is it necessary (to have a single product owner) Problems with multiple product owners Priorities Who determines done Proxy product owners Accountability issues Delegation of authority Dealing with multiple products and a single development team  

Clayton Lengel-Zigich, Derek Neighbors, Roy van de Water and Jade Meskill talk about estimates. Padding Precision vs. accuracy Hard conversations Assurances How to get better at estimates Hours vs points Story estimates vs estimated velocity

Derek Neighbors, Jade Meskill and Clayton Lengel-Zigich discuss running retrospectives. What are some smells? Using same activities all the time. Bad facilitating Use the "F" word more Why does it take so long to get peoples guard down? Inspect and adapt applies to retrospectives too. SMART goals crossfire style Things to remove Speaking on behalf of others People not expressing themselves Phrase questions to get the most out of participants Tips and tricks Read more (GameStorming, Agile Retrospectives, Thinkertoys, Coaching Agile Teams, Innovation Games) Take a risk Add alcohol

Jade Meskill, Alan Dayley, Mike Vizdos and Clayton Lengel-Zigich are in the studio talking about Agile Certifications. Should we certify people? The WOW factor When does it jump the shark? Broken hiring practices HR vs real community Who is doing the certification? There is a demand... Scalability Certification mill problems Why not in universities/schools Certifications will evolve

Clayton Lengel-Zigich, Derek Neighbors and Jade Meskill talk about a blog post from Liz Keogh called Step Away From the Tools. What does it mean to do BDD? Agile as the Hope killer, the tools give you hope Diving In vs Deliberate Discovery Are we too focused on tools instead of the reason's they exist? Tactile Tools and their benefits over Digital in the Process Tools as a blame catcher Assuming you're wrong

Clayton Lengel-Zigich, Derek Neighbors and Jade Meskill talk about continuous deployment and what it means to project management.  The by product being a change in organizations. Historically products were projects Release planning Lean methodologies Team management Organizational changes Overnight competitors Things have to change

Clayton Lengel-Zigich, Derek Neighbors and Elvis talk about growing people on agile teams. Deliberate practice Mentoring team members Practice new skills Mentorship Openmind What's the motivation Saturated market Culture Shared goal

Liz Keogh, Pat Maddox, Federico Soria, Greg Mack, Lynn Langit and Clayton Lengel-Zigich talk about a code retreat held at Gangplank. What is a code retreat Sometimes wrong is better Mocking, flow and learning new languages Microsoft cloud offerrings and exposure to new tools

Clayton Lengel-Zigich, Jade Meskill, Derek Neighbors and William Price III sit down to discuss design in agile software development. Challenges of design in iterative development Pace and lead time Mutual respect Everyone's a designer Design tools suck Backlog overwhelms Ship early and often Crossfunctional teams Style guides Light weight wireframes Notes: Thoughtbot article on Everyone's a Designer The Mike Cohn's "I'm always right card" is a joke from a training session with Mike.

Clayton Lengel-Zigich and Derek Neighbors talk about what it means to be done with a story. What is done? Works on my machine. Real data. Workflow verification. UI/UX completeness. Responsibilities. Whole product thinking. Planning Meetings & Acceptance Criteria

Clayton Lengel-Zigich and Derek Neighbors discuss numerous items around Pair Programming on a SCRUM team. Is agile just for teams? Pairing good traits Pitfalls found while pairing Good pairing habits Pairing in a chaotic environment Various pairing techniques Physical pairing station setup Remote pairing Dealing with distractions

Clayton Lengel-Zigich and Derek Neighbors field questions about SCRUM from Twitter. Reading recommendations for SCRUM Basics. How do I recognize a dysfunctional team? How do I deal with team members with wildly different schedules? What is the agile response for a Request for Proposal? What happens when the team is agile but the company is not?