Agile Amped Podcast - Inspiring Conversations

Coach and consultant at Agile Strategies Dan Montgomery offers his insights on three problems with strategic planning today: 1. With all the effort put into planning, the resulting plan is immediately obsolete. Leaders bring in consultants to create an executable plan assuming that the goal won't shift during the long execution process.2. Because the change is dictated from the top, even Agile transformations aren't Agile in that they don't engage all of the stakeholders in determining the solution. Instead, change management is used to impose the solution on the lower echelons. 3. After all the planning, there's just too much to get done. Agile says, "Start less, finish more" and pull from a backlog. But org plans are so full of details, people get overwhelmed.Dan suggests combatting complexity with simplicity: "Boil it down to a few small rules people can follow and then let them innovate, let them come up with the details."SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at the inaugural Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Given the growing level of complexity, scope and audience involvement, from Andrea Fryrear's perspective, "Agile is our only hope" for modern-day marketing. Her book "Death of a Marketer"(due for release in March 2017) takes a look at the trajectory and cycles of marketing and where it is now. In the book Andrea argues that Agile is the stage in evolution where marketing is at.At Business Agility 2017, Andrea is presenting "A Common Sense Journey into Agile Marketing", in which she shares her experience of the first transformation with her marketing team. She highlights that Agile approaches that work for development teams don't necessarily work for marketing teams: "Because [of] of our challenges, our team structure, our skill sets, it's really hard to create a truly cross-functional marketer, whereas you can get that in a development team much more easily." Development teams gravitate to Scrum, which builds on cross-functional team members, whereas Agile marketers find more utility with Lean and Kanban.SolutionsIQ Marketing Strategist Roxi Ozolins hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

27 years ago, the founder of Morningstar sat his then-small staff down to share his idea for core principles as a foundation that they could grow an enterprise upon. Organizational consultant Doug Kirkpatrick was in that small group, and today Morningstar's two founding principles are still at the core of what is now the largest demand processor in the world:1. People shouldn’t use force or coercion against each other.2. People should honor the commitments they make to each other. Doug has turned his experience into a career, having authored "Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization" and begun the Self-Management institute.The interest in updating organizational management has exploded worldwide, driven in part by technology but also by people's desire to enjoy their work and be autonomous and self-managing. Leaders are now looking around at how the world of work is changing and realizing that they need to understand this change because it affects their business. Doug offers advice to executives and middle managers, and also shares his thoughts on Gary Hamil's "management tax".SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Seven and a half years ago when Paul Cobban started with DBS Bank in Singapore, the company was struggling with customer satisfaction. Since then the bank has gone from "damn bloody slow" to wowing customers. The driven factor for this was the Agile transformation that Paul Cobban has been heading up and for an ambitious vision by the bank's CEO: making banking joyful. To achieve that end, the organization went on the offensive against waste. By bringing together cross-functional teams to find and eliminate waste (a la Kaizen), they were able to eliminate 250 million Customer Hours (each hour that each customer has to wait for a result) in just two years!Then DBS used Design Thinking to create customer journeys, empathize with them and thus create solutions to their real-life problems. To date, DBS Bank has run upwards of 400 of these customer journey programs guided by Design Thinking.SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Phil Abernathy is an Agile Leadership Coach as well as the founder and CEO of Purple Candor. His talk at the first-ever Business Agility 2017 conference is called "Structuring Your Business for Agility". Phil walks us through the maze of systemic organizational structures and processes of today's businesses. Seeing IT's successes with Agile, business and leadership are pulling it in and layering it on existing structures without realizing that they are setting themselves up to fail. With the KPI madness that gave rise to heads of innovation and service, Phil imagines "we will have a head of Business Agility". And at the bottom of all these heads is a single person, a Bob or Mary, who is completely lost. In this maze there are maze runners: individuals who know the bureaucracy and processes so well, they "know how to chase the work through the maze to get it done". Phil commiserates that "we still stick with the manufacturing, industrial era models to run in the knowledge-based economy" - but change is happening. With Agile, leaders are finally able to see the maze for what it is and, Phil believes, we're all in a good place to do something about it.SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at the inaugural Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Agile leadership consultant Todd Little shares with Agile Amped the challenges he's seen in leadership as well as how to grow Agile across the organization. The major challenge impeding widespread adoption of Agile in an enterprise is the fact that business and IT don't have a shared language to facilitate communication and collaboration. In his experience Todd thinks that business and leadership are interested in the gains of agility but then they inadvertently create structures that run counter to this goal. Todd advocates strongly for moving toward forming partnerships, shared ownership, agreeing on a shared language, and identifying constraints and costs associated with change. SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City. About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Author of "Sense and Respond: The Journey to Customer Purpose" Stephen Parry has a simple imperative: "Don't implement, grow." Organizational change isn't something you can implement, it's something the organization has to grow into. Management is so focused on "implementing the mechanics, and doing nothing with the dynamics". But Stephen advises, "You cannot implement an adaptive organization, you can only grow one."Stephen also touches on some of the other pressures impeding organizational change, for example, the legal implications: an employee's bonus may be affected by a change in role. In this case, the business can offer the bonus anyway as a motivator to get the employee bought in -- but few organizations are brave enough to do that. Stephen is also working with universities to look at the nature of the psychological change with Lean and Agile.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Isabella Serg got her start in Agile HR in financial services and insurance in Australia. That's where she learned that agility and adaptability aren't just an IT or delivery thing. Today, as Talent Advisor at IBM CIO, Isabella focuses on "how to improve people, talent, leadership practices to develop great Agile leaders and attract, develop and retain great Agile talent." This objective requires bringing an Agile mindset to the HR function -- and indeed to all parts of the organization. Isabella is certain that non-IT teams need to be Agile as well to improve their responsiveness. IBM is leveraging organizational agility as a market differentiator because, as Isabella points out, "The war for talent is here... [Incoming young people are] really looking for great leadership, great culture, and great learning and development opportunities." And this culture centers around the behaviors instilled by leadership. The most important driving focus, regardless of your organizational function (HR, IT, etc.), is "putting the customer at the center of everything we do."SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Leadership development expert and author of "Leadership Agility" Bill Joiner discusses the need for exactly that as the business environment continues to change and accelerate. Research shows that companies that are more agile outperform other companies. Further Agile companies require Agile leadership, so it is in the C-suite's own best interest to invest in Business Agility. Bill has also found that the key lever in increasing Business Agility is what he calls leadership agility -- particularly, the culture of leadership in a company.In his book, Bill writes that leaders move through 3 stages in developing agility: Expert, Achiever and Catalyst. Unfortunately, the majority of today's leaders are early in their development path because the previous century rewarded (and continues to reward) Experts and Achievers. Joiner's work focuses on helping leaders move through Expert to Achiever to Catalyst, and he is optimistic that the day will come when leaders will act with an Agile mindset, aiming not just for the target but through it. However, the change requires leadership to look at themselves and evolve their approach to be more like a Catalyst.SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Bjarte Bogsnes wrote the book underpinning the Beyond Budgeting movement - literally. “Implementing Beyond Budgeting – Unlocking the Performance Potential” captures his experiences helping organizations go "beyond budgeting". Bjarte reminds us that "Beyond Budgeting is and has always been about much more than budgets." The name is a little misleading because the purpose of beyond budgeting isn’t necessarily to get rid of budget but to change traditional management where you find the budgeting process and the budgeting mindset. Beyond Budgeting is a much broader, "comprehensive, coherent management model that addresses both management processes and leadership principles." Which brings to the fore the concept of management innovation: exploration and testing in management models. The paradox is that executives love product innovation but are scared of management innovation because it requires a change in them. This change, however, is where real competitive advantage lay in today's markets. SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City. About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Lithespeed's Jason Hall understands that keeping employees engaged and happy is important. Toward this end many organizations have reward systems: bonuses, shares, company lunches, even massages and boxed chocolates (thanks, Google!). But Jason highlights for us the fact that these rewards are doled out according to a hierarchical meritocracy: someone, whether a VP or senior manager, is deciding whether and who deserves recognition. While Jason thinks this is great and he has no beef with a meritocracy approach per se, but it doesn't reinforce team-based collaboration. Jason shares his experience at Lithespeed where they experimented with different rewards/recognition programs. First they tried a token- or penny-based system before landing on their "Recognize at Lithespeed" program -- a peer-based system that, Jason says, "hits the nail on the head": real-time recognitions that people email to each other rather than waiting til the end of the quarter, for example, which was the previous token-based model. SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City. About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Let’s get the community together and come up with a definition of Business Agility. But, according to business transformation leader and author Evan Leybourn, "having a nebulous set of common ideals, principles that form Business Agility gives us a common banner to work [under]... If we try to narrow it to something, we actually lose the power of this movement, the power of changing how organizations work" and inadvertently exclude something of value. Leybourn reminds us that delivery used to be the constraint to agility. Today, that constraint has moved to the business side: the PMO, Finance, HR, and in the structure of the organization. Business Agility applies the Agile mindset to the entire organization, enabling the enterprise to be competitive in the market. Leybourn also shares his three domains of agility, which are interlinked and do not form a hierarchy:1. Technical agility: Agile in software - e.g., paired programming, DevOps2. Process agility: Scrum, Kanban3. Business Agility: Leadership, organization structure and processes SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts. About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Being a product owner is far more than just backlogs and Kano analysis, and Geoff Watts knows this. In this episode we discuss his newest book “ Product Mastery-from good to great product Ownership” and why he feels its what’s needed for Product owners today. He’s challenging PO’s to be DRIVEN. As an acronym, D.R.I.V.E.N. is Decisive, Ruthless, informed, Versatile, Empowering and Negotiable. We also speculate a bit on his prediction on the future needs of product owners in the coming decade.  The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: YouTube, ITunes, Agile Amped Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: Facebook

Steve Denning is a thought leader par excellence in the Agile industry. With six successful business books and 600 articles on Forbes, which collectively deal with radical changes is leadership, management and storytelling, Steve has been a vocal proponent for Agile for years. In this Agile In-Depth podcast, SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett discusses with Steve the 3 Laws of Agile and how simplicity is the strongest weapon to combat complexity. Steve is also promoting the upcoming inaugural Business Agility conference, which SolutionsIQ and Agile Amped will be onsite to capture! Here are some sound bites to whet your appetite: "We are moving towards a world I think where... Agile will simply be management, and the normal way to run a company will be Agile." Instead of scaling the organization up... it's de-scaling the work down to small pieces, small teams, small batches, small cycles... (In this way) you can in fact handle some very large, complex problems." "An obsession with delivering value to the customer... and giving everyone a clear line of sight to the ultimate end user." "Culture is a verb, not a noun." "The biggest risk is on-boarding people at the senior level... If they are not on the same page, then the organization is heading for immediate problems." Further Resources "Explaining Agile" (Forbes article by Steve Denning) Steve Denning on Forbes stevedenning.com

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention and so it was that, in 2009, SAFe Fellow Drew Jemilo invented the starter material for portfolio management approach now found in SAFe 4.0. With only one night and "lots of coffee", Drew managed to piece together a workshop based on Dean Leffingwell's architectural portfolio management material. Over the years, Drew and his colleagues at Scaled Agile have much opportunity and learnings with which to improve the material, and today he provides a rough sketch of it to Agile Amped and you, our viewers! SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. Steve and Drew even recount a shared memory of a workshop the duo did together. About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook Caffeine-Induced "Brilliant Moment" Made it Into SAFe 4.0