Transformation is really about forming teams, building backlogs, and producing working, tested product. At scale, it’s about defining structure, and creating governance, metrics, and tooling strategies that support Agility.

Anything that gets in the way of doing any of these things is an impediment to Transformation. But the actual work of the Transformation is getting rid of all the organizational things that get in the way of doing that-and to do that, you need the right system in place, an ecosystem where this can happen.

Teaching people the basics of Scrum and telling them to self-organize, except in possibly the smallest of organizations, isn’t going to lead to Agility. …

Recored by Dave Prior

In this episode of SoundNotes, Matt Craig joins Dave for a discussion that centers around comparing the way biological systems and businesses function and respond to change. In a biological system, enzymes bring elements together that catalyze reactions and keep iterating until they find an effective response. (Think of the body’s immune system learning to fight off a cold.) At LeadingAgile, our coaches and consultants serve in a similar manner helping to catalyze change within our client’s organizations. Matt is a Principal Consultant at LeadingAgile and he specializes in strategic and sustainable organizational health and improvement. …

Written by LeadingAgile

Cost savings is a tricky subject with Agile. But it’s not because Agile can’t impact cost savings. It’s because Agile has very little impact on direct and immediate cost savings. The problem is, most people think the wrong way about how to save on cost with Agile. They usually say Scrum is how they realize cost savings — but they’re missing something.

To watch the full webinar on how Agile adoption can reduce costs, check out the Key Business Drivers of Agility on-demand webinar series here.

Transcript

In its simplest form, like why shouldn’t you think about Agile as a cost-savings tool? Well, the problem is with thinking about Agile as a cost-savings tool, is that most of the organizations that we walk into are are legitimately 10 X over subscribed. I mean, it’s absolutely insane what most organizations are being asked to do. You know, you go through and you do this kind of annual planning cycle and you have all this stuff, you have all these objectives and OKR’s all this different stuff, and you’re trying to run it through an organization that just is not capable, in reality, of being able to do that. So a lot of times the challenge becomes is like what do you do when you legit need to save money? …

Written by Joel Norman

In an earlier life, I coded several different life-critical applications that aided decision support in complex domains. Domains where a mistake could result in people being injured or dying. As the code was written, new use cases were discovered. What if there is a 2,000-pound baby with kidney failure? Is that a typo or a real thing? What if the scientist in the lab did not follow the formula as described? What if, what if?

Naturally, the fear of harm slowed development due to an abundance of caution. The qualified clinicians and scientists could describe scenarios fantastically, and always prescribe a solution. …

Recorded By Dave Prior

Dave Prior sits down for a conversation with LeadingAgile CEO Mike Cottmeyer and they explore Mike’s Agile approach to personal development and dig into the details of how and why his approach to growth and development has evolved over time.

https://soundcloud.com/leadingagile/an-agile-approach-to-personal-development-w-mike-cottmeyer

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo

Email: dave.prior@leadingagile.com

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to dave.prior@leadingagile.com

And if you’re interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified ScrumMaster or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Written by LeadingAgile

Agile in general, and Scrum specifically, is predicated on the idea that each team has everything they need to deliver an increment of value. But unless you’re a small team or a new startup, that’s usually the furthest from the truth.

When a team doesn’t have everything it needs to deliver an increment of value, that’s a dependency. And dependencies come in many forms.

Scrum assumes you have no dependencies. But the reality is, if you’re a large enterprise trying to become Agile at scale, you’re typically up against a host of more complicated ones.

In large enterprises, we’re not only talking about dependencies between the team and external entities but also between teams that need each other to deliver an end-to-end increment of working, tested product. …

Written By LeadingAgile

Dependencies will stop Agility dead in its tracks. In the presence of dependencies, you’re never going to achieve the level of Agility you desire-unless you do something about them.

So you only have two choices when it comes to this. You can either encapsulate the dependencies within the team or within the value stream, or you can orchestrate them. Another way to say this is that you either must break the dependencies, or you must manage them.

Either way, if you have dependencies, you cannot pretend they don’t exist.

The Assumptions of Scrum

So, what does Scrum say about dependencies? It assumes you don’t have them in the first place. And if you look at the way that Scrum is architected, you’ll notice that it assumes a lot, including that each…

Recorded by Mike Cottmeyer

Welcome to our latest episode of the Agile Unplugged podcast with host Mike Cottmeyer, LeadingAgile’s CEO. In each episode of Unplugged, Mike and a special guest explore LeadingAgile’s freshest ideas, mental models, frameworks, and solutions with the people that are actually doing the work of leading large-scale Agile Transformation in the real world.

We’ll hear about Matt’s background and reveal our roadmap for building the new LeadingAgile Studios, our newest offerings to enable clients to use their capabilities to gain the strength, Agility, and craftsmanship to take on digitally native organizations in the marketplace.

Remember to subscribe and listen to Agile Unplugged on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Podbean-and watch each and every episode on YouTube, IGTV, and Facebook. …