Dave West on Agile beyond Software, Organisational Alignment and How Product Ownership is Hard

Show Notes

• 00:34 Introductions 
• 01:02 The move of agile ideas beyond software teams
• 01:15 The use of Scrum for marketing
• 01:36 How agile approaches are being used in complex engineering environments that go beyond software (SpaceX, Tesla, BMW, Toyota …)
• 02:04 The core is the importance of delivering value to customers
• 02:10 The scope of agility is more than just delivering great product – it is delivering great product, getting great feedback, experimentation and learning
• 02:25 The merger of ideas like Lean Startup and LeanUX with agile approaches
• 02:52 The large consulting firms such as McKinsey & Boston Consulting are now driving agile adoptions in larger enterprises via their access to the most senior executives  
• 03:32 “New Ways of Working” as a label for agile adoption at scale
• 04:04 The need to focus on outcomes to help prevent agile-in-name-only transformations 
• 04:10 Moving away from thinking about outcomes in terms of plan-budget-risk towards customer value
• 04:25 Until organisation make this change in focus, nothing else will fundamentally change
• 04:47 Referring to Calota Perez’s work on the ages of technological change and the changes needed to enable real transformation 
• 05:18 The large consulting firms have the relationships at the most senior levels to enable top-down change in organisations 
• 05:56 The world is full of complex problems; solving these problems needs effective teams, and scrum is the predominant way in which teams are organised to be effective today 
• 06:28 Scrum.org continuing to build bridges into the wider community of ideas such as with Kanban and LeanUX 
• 06:40 Bring out ideas around leadership and the relationship with Management 3.0
• 06:51 Trying to build a more consistent, systematic approach to solving complex problems
• 07:04 The growth in the scrum.org community 
• 07:30 Scrum.org has been focused on helping organisations, teams and teams of teams solve complex problems 
• 07:40 Changes coming to the scrum.org content and post-class support infrastructure 
• 08:02 Building more community and the need to improve coaching 
• 08:28 Summarizing research done with McKinsey into agile personalities 
• 08:46 One of the most important characteristics for effective teamwork is agreeableness 
• 08:57 “Yes, and” rather than “yes, but” 
• 09:08 The way a good coach facilitates getting to “yes, and” behaviours in a group and how that contributes to delivering value
• 10:04 The historic gaps in the adoption of scrum approaches – Martin Fowler’s Flaccid Scrum 
• 10:27 Most software teams today are delivering relatively well, however there is misalignment between the delivery teams and the wider organisation’s ability to accept and release product to the market effectively
• 10:46 Problems with the way in which we manage work
• 10:54 Align teams to outcomes and customers rather than to projects and silos
• 11:24 The gaps are around organisational alignment, funding approaches
• 11:59 The need to think differently about risk 
• 12:14 The need for more professionalism in the agile community 
• 12:18 The number of people who call themselves agile coaches with no background or training in the discipline of coaching 
• 12:41 Professionalizing the industry is hard 
• 12:50 Identifying “what makes a good ……” is difficult to define
• 13:14 The mess in the industry around the role of product ownership 
• 13:31 Most organisations have an inability to empower people to make decisions
• 13:34 The skills of product ownership are really, really difficult 
• 14:08 Product ownership is where the gaps all come together and it’s a hard job
• 14:48 The contentious relationship between the product community and the scrum community
• 15:06 The original title for the Product Owner role was Agile Product Manager
• 15:13 The rationale for the change to Product Owner and the need for empowerment in that role
• 15:48 Exploring aspects of product ownership and some of the disfunctions that can come about
• 16:36 Making the decisions about what’s in and what’s out in a product is hard
• 17:14 Drawing on the very tangible practices from LeanUX to help the product owner and the team make better decisions about priorities 
• 17:47 Reasons why having Personas on the Team Wall is a good practice 
• 18:35 Personas give us a clear view of purpose – why are we building this product for who? 
• 19:01 A story of clear purpose at a pharmaceutical event
• 19:48 The value of metrics that make sense for product ownership 
• 20:15 Product ownership is the place where organisational disfunctions manifest themselves
• 21:10 Advice for technical leaders – 
  • Alignment and clarity around what the teams should be focused on – a clear vision that defines success in terms of outcomes and goals 
  • Stop having all the answers and start asking questions – talk to understand, don’t talk to win
• 22:05 Solving complex problems needs super-smart people working together and it’s hard
• 22:34 We can fix all the big complex problems in the world, if we get amazing groups of people to work together
• 22:58 Build an organisation around you that is ultimately kind
• 23:11 Ask your team every day “who have you helped?” 

Mentioned:

• Agile 2019
• Scrum.org
• Lean Startup
• LeanUX
• Carlota Perez – Ages of Technological Change 
• Management 3.0
• Cynefin
• McKinsey
• Boston Consulting Group
•  The Agile Personality (research results)
• Martin Fowler – Flaccid Scrum
• #NoProjects
• SAFe
• Mind the Product
• Personas on the Team Wall
• Dan Pink – Motivators
• Dave on email and Twitter