In this episode, we explore The Core Protocols, a set of ideas developed by Jim and Michele McCarthy as they investigated the causes of performance improvement in teams.
During that research, Jim and Michele discovered that high-performance teams did a lot of things in a similar way, and we explore some of those patterns that successful teams take on.
The Core Protocols not only describe the patterns of successful teams, but also act as a “map” of the things we need to consider when helping our teams.
Read on for the detailed break down of the episode…
Does your company need estimation? Listen to Erwin’s take. He’s a CEO. He should know.
Erwin has his own company and invests his own money in that company. For him, #NoEstimates solves a clear problem: too much time wasted estimating, instead of producing.
He challenges us to investigate how much money and time we already invest in that process, and then to measure the benefits. Are we getting enough return on the time and money we invest on estimation?
We learn about Erwin’s story of adoption. How he started with gradually larger projects, even at larger clients, and what he learned about the dynamics that push companies to make larger and larger decisions. Those larger decisions look like they require estimates, but why aren’t we questioning the need to make large decisions (large batch)?
Can we apply Agile ideas to the definition and execution of Strategy for our businesses? Trent Hone, award winning Naval historian, Karl Scotland, Agile Strategy pioneer, and Henri Mårtensson, long time author on the topic of business strategy got together to discuss just that.
Al Shalloway is a veteran of the software industry, and one of the early adopters of Agile. His company NetObjectives has even been podcasting on the Agile space way before Agile was popular. NetObjectives started their Lean And Agile Straight Talk Podcast way back in 2006, and you can still find many of their episodes on iTunes.
Business Value, the forgotten goal
In this episode we start by talking about the concept of “Business Value”, which is often forgotten in favor of some process goal like “adopt agile”. One can ask: what is the value of adopting Agile if we end up going bust?
But it is not so easy to define business value. In this episode we explore what might be the meaning or definition of business value in our organizations. We also discuss how we can help our teams focus on impact, not just more features delivered. And we end up talking about the need to have a process that adapts to many different organizations. Al talks about FLEX, a model NetObjectives developed after working with many organizations and understanding what is not working today when we try to scale Agile.
Developing an Agile model for organizations of many sizes
Al and his team have been around for a while. They have used XP, Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, Lean and more recently FLEX. From that varied experience, Al has learned a lot that he applies today in his company. From the insight that Scrum can only succeed if we take care of the people, to how SAFe is more appropriate to certain organizations, to the idea that management has to be an integral part of any transformation or Agile adoption. We talk about the Art of Action by Bungay, the orientation of management (hint: not top-down or bottom-up!), and double-loop learning. Double-loop learning is an essential part of transformation and actionable learning. We also refer to the New New Product Development Game, and other work by Nonaka, which informed the creation of Scrum.
