Description

In this episode, the Mastering Agility Podcast-team discusses various misunderstandings and misapplications of Agile practices, particularly how Agile is often reduced to a set of tools or deadlines rather than its core principles of flexibility and value-driven work.

Key points include:

• Agile can be misused to push unfinished work or prioritize speed over quality.

• Many companies dehumanize employees by treating them as "resources" or "tools" rather than people.

• It's necessary to challenge the status quo and question whether certain processes or features are necessary .

• Innovation within organizations requires more than hackathons and "innovation days"

• Agile is about responding to change, not just completing work faster. True agility requires the ability to stop work and pivot if needed.

  
  

The episode also touches on themes like trust within teams, the pitfalls of bureaucratic decision-making, and how large corporations struggle to implement true Agile principles compared to smaller, nimble organizations.

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Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Welcome to Mastering Agility. If you want to listen to authentic conversations with the most inspiring guests, find like-minded people in the Mastering Agility Discord community, or both online and face-to-face events, this is the platform for you. Grab a drink, sit back, and join professional scrum trainers Sander Doerr, Jim Sammons, and their guests in an all-new episode.

• Speaker #1

  We're bowling. We're bowling. damn hey the plane the plane hold on it's on the nose it's on the nose it's a good example like working for boeing hey just 80 done that's fine we're good

• Speaker #2

  80 is sufficient like who needs safety uh being in that 80 percent

• Speaker #1

  Safety is overrated anyway. Yep. I mean, if you can appear 80% alive, that's sufficient.

• Speaker #2

  And, you know, we all want to get to done. And, you know, that percentage means more than the quality and the value that we're delivering. So it's all in the name of agility. Because agility is for us to deliver faster, isn't it?

• Speaker #1

  Yes. Deliver faster and save money. Don't forget that one.

• Speaker #2

  Yep. Oh, yeah. Save money.

• Speaker #3

  deliver before even the deadline arbitrary deadlines have a high velocity and use less human resources oh fuck that oh and our resources our resources human capital yeah right human capital sorry we're a body shop human not

• Speaker #1

  allowed to say human we're just having butts in seats oh butts in seats fuck that even more Jim you're muted we cannot hear you but you

• Speaker #4

  Is this the actual recording? How nice do we have to be? Oh my lord. Okay, well then I will be politically correct.

• Speaker #1

  No. Where did you feel like I was politically correct? Since when did we move to PC platform? Well,

• Speaker #4

  somebody's gotta be. Let me show where it's at.

• Speaker #1

  Fuck PC too.

• Speaker #4

  Yeah. No, I forget what movie it's from, but it says something about like... there's a line when you're getting on an airplane, like just remember you're strapping yourself into this thing that was built by the lowest bidder from who knows where, like 12 years ago. So yeah.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Flying death tube.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah.

• Speaker #4

  Yeah. Basically.

• Speaker #1

  But isn't it interesting that we just pushed that. I know a lot of organizations still keep pushing shit out just in the name of agility because then we're agile, right? And agile is fucking awesome. Agile is the goal. We should be agile or else. Because if you're agile, that means automatically you get a lot of stuff done.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah. Delivery, delivery, delivery. Is it useful? Who cares? We delivered it.

• Speaker #4

  I'm sure all of us deal with this misunderstanding of agility is like getting more work done or being more efficient. You know, if you do word association with anybody, like those come up almost every freaking time. And I would like to think after, I don't know, 20 plus years of educating people on things like lean. Six Sigma, TQM, all these other associated things that we know better, or we know how a factory differs from an office building. But I don't know that we do for the most part.

• Speaker #1

  No, not if you treat people like that. Not if you make them pretend that you're working in the factory. Sure. If you make the environment a factory, even though you're in an office, what's the difference?

• Speaker #2

  Yeah. And that's what I've been seeing is it's factory worker, you're a cog, you're replaceable. get this done or else. Then they dehumanize them by calling them resources and tools instead of humans or people or even developers or testers or whatever they prefer to be called as their title of their actual role. They are dehumanized, so it's easier to treat them inhumane.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. And then you get these comments like, I can't wait for the week to be over. I can't wait until it's Friday. So weekend starts. Dude, if that's going to be your attitude, it's going to be a long as way until your retirement. And then when your retirement starts, you've been so worn out because you've been in cognizant system that your retirement is going to suck too. So we're all in for positivity this episode. Let's fucking go.

• Speaker #4

  Yeah, I was going to say like kumbaya and trust falls. When are those going to start?

• Speaker #3

  Yeah, let's sing a song together. Let's start with a nice song.

• Speaker #2

  Should we have our own agility song, like Kumbaya, but replace the words with agility words? Oh yeah,

• Speaker #3

  that would be wonderful. Like a little bullshit bingo, but just as a song.

• Speaker #4

  Maybe we should commission Chad and Jeff to record one of their Scrum Agile parody videos for us or songs.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. Of course,

• Speaker #4

  then we'll owe them like 72 cents every episode that it gets aired or some sort of licensing agreement.

• Speaker #3

  We could have a whole album, actually. Start with all the points she burned.

• Speaker #4

  All the points she burns.

• Speaker #1

  That's one that Chad actually made, I think, if I'm not mistaken. I like the one. Really?

• Speaker #3

  Stop with that.

• Speaker #1

  I don't think so. Let me see.

• Speaker #4

  Maybe we should, like, oh, my gosh. I wish that on my stream deck I could hit a button that when this one manager comes into a call, I just play wrecking ball. Like, coming in like a wrecking ball. And just, like, totally blowing up whatever the conversation is at that time.

• Speaker #1

  Let's see. If you don't know, my dear audience, check out Chad Byer on YouTube. Agile songs by Chad Byer. The power of Scrum. Hey, Scrum Master. Smells like Scrum spirit. Best sprint with my Scrum team. Runaway sprint. Scrum my god. I still found the Agile I'm looking for. As do neither do we. Scrum Star. The Scrum Guide is a-changing. Kanban is lean. Scrum scale away and have yourself an Angela's Christmas.

• Speaker #4

  Yeah. Like we've seen some of these in person. We've seen some of these in person at Scrum.org face-to-face type stuff.

• Speaker #1

  Oh yeah. He can pull it off like impromptu. He just goes, I like that. Well,

• Speaker #4

  there's like a, a Scrum.org, um, jam band. Like, isn't it? Dan, Dan Brown. It's under that will like karaoke and I could have swore I've seen an instrument in his hand on one of the calls. Yeah. Can band Dan.

• Speaker #3

  What's the band called?

• Speaker #1

  Dan's band.

• Speaker #4

  The increments like the increments. I totally need a black T-shirt place playing old CBGBs like an old Ramones logo, but the increments. And then it could be something like,

• Speaker #3

  like. PBLI Cemetery. You know, I could see that. That's the Pet Cemetery.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah.

• Speaker #4

  We did...

• Speaker #2

  The band posters, too. Ooh, those would be good.

• Speaker #4

  Now playing, yeah. You could say I was there. We did a ceremony for a Jira item like eight years ago. We literally had a funeral ceremony in between a bunch of cubicles and offices with a cardboard gravestone. Here lies... Jira number, blah, blah, blah. We finally put it to rest. It was super fun.

• Speaker #1

  But doesn't that mean because you've created stickies or Jira tasks, now we're doing Agile just for the sake of being Agile?

• Speaker #4

  I mean, not at that company. I will say that was a really awesome team. But yes, and it's under many times, many places that is like, oh, you use an Agile tool, so you're an Agile team.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, but there are a lot of tools anyway. And I mean people as tools. I once walked into a bank for a new assignment and they said, we're all doing Agile here. We just started doing Agile. We're all doing great. I said, all right, then show me what you're doing. And he said, look, you're on the window. There's stickies, we're doing Agile. That's it. That was their version of Agile at the time.

• Speaker #2

  Did you give them a sticker board?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I slapped them with it.

• Speaker #3

  Nice, well done.

• Speaker #4

  So yesterday we had a session. I would love to hear what the three of you think about this. And we didn't define agility, but what I was trying to do was to connect, how can agile work for somebody? And one of the things I keep coming back to is, if you work this way, can you stop in the future and have something? And this is one of the ways that I explain how working in an agile manner might be different for somebody who... maybe doesn't get it, or they think it's just Post-its and Sharpies, or they think it's rigidly filling up a sprint and promising in blood and doing some sort of secret skulls handshake in a conference room and then leaving. And they're like, well, what do you mean? And I'm like, well, with the way you've broken down this work, this project, your backlog, if you get to item number five and your budget's pulled or the team is canceled because they're hired guns, will you have anything? And they said, no. we won't, we would not be able to stop. And I said, okay. And we talked about some potential ways for them to take the same exact work items, define it and do it a little tiny bit differently. And at any point they could stop. And they were like, Wait, that's agility? I'm like, I'm not going to say that's synonymous with agility, but if you can deliver incremental value and stop at any point when enough, for any reason, good or bad, yeah, that's a hell of a lot more agile than, my user story is, you promised to do item number 7 of 11, so go do it. If it's a spectrum, I think I'm far closer to ideal than that.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. And I think what many organizations miss is just the ability to respond to change. And I don't mean like, hey, we created a plan. Now management is going to barge in and say, now we're going to do something completely different and completely the opposite while the developers are in full focus mode and they're just chugging away. And they're like, fuck, now we've got to change something else again. That's not agile. That's not changing. Of course, that's based on stuff that you actually learn that might be a little bit more valuable. Let's chase that.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, I have a... The situation that I came in on this team that I'm on now was the managers wanted to see every feature started at least. But that meant nothing was going to get finished. We had so many features. Everyone was working everywhere and spread out so much. I said, no, no, no. Why don't we focus on one or two, get those done, and then start the others. But the status in JIRA, if it didn't say in progress, it gave leaders and managers. the heebie-jeebies and felt like no work was ever going to get done. So the perception and the pressure from higher ups definitely can dictate, but I think that's a sign of a good scrum master though, is that I put myself in between my teams and those people and said, no, this is why we're not doing it that way. And I think you will thank me in six months that these are all done instead of all still in progress because we're constantly context switching all over the place.

• Speaker #3

  This should be one of the stances of the scrum master, like the management wall, just keeping management away from your team separator.

• Speaker #1

  Well, actually it's sorta is, kind of sorta-ish. It's not necessarily stance, but it's nicely wrapped in the context and the words of they cause change or improvement in the organization and not just in the scrum team. And I think that's where many organizations and we work together at Sky. That's where a lot of companies like Sky. they do it in the wrong way where scrum masters if that goes well if a scrum team uh works as it should be they didn't sort of know the events how they should be run oh then you can take up another team no how about you start working more vertically and start working with the rest of the organization and sales and management and hr and i don't know what not fix that first and then do another team yeah we don't need that because we just have this one small agile

• Speaker #3

  project Agile just exists in this little bubble and the rest of the company can just remain as is because it's been running fine like that for the past couple of years. Why change? Let the Agile people do their fancy stuff.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, and the best thing to do for a company is always do as you've always done because it's successful. Why change?

• Speaker #1

  That's the dumbest argument that I've ever heard. I used to have single-layer glass in my parental house as well. as if I'm going to keep that in my walls over here as well. It doesn't make any sense. If I have a lot better versions, why am I going to stick to these inferior versions? Why am I going to stick to an inferior way of developing my products? Just because that's what we've always done.

• Speaker #4

  Well, a lot of people have the mindset, including myself at times, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Change for the sake of change can be... arrogance, narcissism, wasteful, all types of bad stuff. But some people just don't know there's a better option. Like we had some friends over this last weekend and we're sitting in the pool and I pointed to a shovel and I'm like, that product hanging off my shovel is considered one of the first actual innovations in shovels in like hundreds of years.

• Speaker #1

  What's the product that's hanging from your shovel?

• Speaker #4

  It's a handle that is... ambidextrous that can be moved and adjusted to drastically reduce the strain on your lower back while just making a shovel more useful. And I hand shoveled 8,000 pounds of rocks a few weeks ago, and I didn't so much as feel one strain in my back after doing it. Now, I might not have if I had used a normal shovel, but my point is he didn't even know it existed. Because he had no reason to. If he had Googled it, if he was digging 100 holes and hurt his back, he'd probably go Google it. So I think for some people, we're in the business of saying there is a better way.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, two things there that popped to mind. One, if we would always stick to the same paradigm that this is the way we've always done it, we'd still be here chugging sticks and poking. fucking sticks into the fire being fucking caveman that's one second thing is innovation like these don't mean when a lot of organizations treat them to to be we need to innovate then how many organizations have you worked with that treat innovation like just wrapping up work for instance a uh like we in in safe i'm not going to bash safe don't worry people i mean i'm not going to go into that tangent again but in safe you got an ip sprint innovation and planning how often does actual innovation actually take place? Versus how often do we use that IP sprint to wrap up work and maybe eliminate a single or secondary bug?

• Speaker #4

  When the unicorn rides with the leprechaun on its back, rides into the sprint and drops off the innovation stork? I don't know. Rarely.

• Speaker #1

  Ladies, how often do you see actual innovation going on?

• Speaker #2

  Well,

• Speaker #3

  Back in that safe environment that I used to work in, I didn't see it at all, as in never. Because like you said, we used that to just do tasks that didn't get done because we squeezed the PI completely full to 125%.

• Speaker #2

  I get a couple. I do get a couple innovative thinkers on my teams that will push the boundaries and test differently. And now that it has been working. Because we also, my teams also are kind of like in the shadows and forgotten a lot. So when we experiment with things, people don't really notice it. But now other teams are taking our lead and example and going to be implementing a lot of the things that we've been doing for the last year and a half.

• Speaker #1

  How would you consider innovation that it should be? How would you like it to be?

• Speaker #2

  I would like it to be for every team to do this because the things that work for my team don't necessarily work for other teams. Their work is different. Their process is different. The people on them are different. So the biggest thing that I do right now is just implementing the scrum and Kanban principles. It just helps. If we could get all teams to relate and get down to the nitty-gritty with their teams, in my experience, it would definitely benefit everyone. Everyone would feel more part of the team, and we would push forward and have... innovation and forward thinking things instead of always being so reactive.

• Speaker #1

  Is that truly innovation? Like how would you describe innovation to your team or to your company? And what kind of options do you have with it?

• Speaker #2

  Well, for example, right now for innovation, I would love to see that we have more people involved in the process because we're in the middle of creating a whole new system for the whole company. So being innovative here would mean being forward thinking in the process. What features are we going to include and what features from previous production that we just don't need anymore? Because, yeah, it was a feature, but did we really use it? And I would love to see the team being able to cut the wheat from the shaft and say, hey, these are just ancillary features. No one's ever going to touch them. Why are we rebuilding them just because it's in this new feature? Instead. Our customers would really enjoy having these features that are coming down the line in other companies that are similar to ours.

• Speaker #1

  How do you handle that? Like, how do you verify whether something's worth the investment?

• Speaker #2

  We have a lot of product owners that we talk to. And then I also will get their actual people using those conversations. But it is like, because they feel like they're doing something bad, like they're tattling on the company to say, we shouldn't use, we shouldn't create this feature again, because it's not useful.

• Speaker #1

  In fact, I think that's one of the most influential and most important things that many, either product owners, developers, scrum masters, whatever role that you have, any other type of employee should do. Challenge the status quo in that sense. They find that we're doing this, but why the hell is it still here? Do we have any appendices to our product? They're now just turning into a bucket of money that we just continue to pile on. Unfortunately, unlike Jim's shovel, buckets have not been... iterated and innovated in a very long time that now all of a sudden we can indeed like chuck 250 into 100 capacity bucket so it's the same with products don't maintain stuff you don't that you don't need to maintain why is it still here take it out but it's going to hurt someone's feelings because it's something they wanted sure

• Speaker #4

  like when i think that go ahead i think the most common answer i hear is because some so-and-so asked for it Or because someone asked for it or whatever. That's truly the response I get the most when I say, why are we doing this? Or what are we hoping to gain from this?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. I had a few conversations about this, the kind of this stuff, well, last few weeks in multiple classes I was teaching. If I'm going to ask my kids to do something, what's the first question that I'm going to get?

• Speaker #2

  Why?

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. Why? Preferably like this. Why? Why me? Why now? Why do I always? Those kind of questions we never ask anymore in our products, in our teams, in our professional life. We just. take it for granted because the higher ups said so because the grownups just told us to do so. Instead of thinking, why should we do this? Why is this important? What is going to happen if we do not do this? Then Larry is going to be upset. So, all right, cool. He's a grownup. I'm pretty sure I can deal with that. How about you need to upset some people sometimes? Yeah, just rattle some cages. That's fine.

• Speaker #3

  But what about my promotion? Then Larry won't promote me. I need to get my promotion to senior PO next year.

• Speaker #2

  So I can hear my kids whining, complaining about the new chores I give them because,

• Speaker #1

  you know, I bought a boat. That's an interesting thing as well. It's always about promotion. But what if you're not going to get the promotion? How about asking yourself, am I currently happy in my job? And if the answer is no, then start doing something else. Is that promotion really going to make you happy or is it just going to make your bank account grow? Which is also nice, but it's not necessarily going to make you happy.

• Speaker #2

  Or is it going to make you just... Larry too.

• Speaker #3

  Yeah, I could become Larry one day. Yeah. And people would make me happy at work.

• Speaker #1

  So a critical question to reflect on is to Larry or not to Larry?

• Speaker #2

  Yeah. But is it in the name of agility to be Larry?

• Speaker #3

  I think so. Because Larry has the last word. He has the last say, right? He's the stakeholder and he says, we need to get this done. I think this is a really cool feature. I think we need this. I want to see.

• Speaker #1

  our customers being unable to use this particular feature larry would know if larry doesn't know who would know what our customers want both jim and i are experienced consultants and trainers therefore we know how important it is for organizations to have the fundaments in place before delivering high value products and this starts with understanding the theory behind whatever framework method or process organizations apply and this is where xebia comes in Xebia is a pioneering software engineering and IT consultancy company, transforming and executing at the intersection of domain and technology to create digital leaders for our people, clients, partners, and communities. As a gift for our Mastering Agility audience, they provided us with a discount code MA10 when signing up for their open enrollment classes to get 10% off. Go to xebia.com slash academy to find the entire curriculum of courses. That is XebiaX. e-b-i-a dot com slash academy to find all their courses.

• Speaker #4

  Well, I don't know if I've told any of you this or if we talked about it before, but a PMO director told me last year, was it last year? Anyway, it was like in the last six or eight months that when he got to his current company, he had been somewhere else for a long, long time. There were 76 projects going on. He canceled over 40 of them. Just logged in, canceled them, notified the PMs. And I said, and what happened? Nothing. Nobody even knew. Some people didn't even know. Now, I'm not, again, like I think I've said before, I'm not suggesting we do that. But I bet everybody we know has waste on their backlog, in progress, in their brain, in some tool. that nobody would care if we canceled it, that it's just one of those things that everybody just keeps sticking in the box and moving from apartment to apartment, house to house. And then somebody's like, why do you have this? And you're like, I honestly have no idea. And you throw it in the garbage. And your life isn't affected in any way, good or bad by throwing it in the garbage.

• Speaker #3

  But what if we need it one day? That's why we keep all of our cables, right? I bet every one of you has that as well. We all have this mysterious. box with cables that could charge a Nokia from 1997 because what if one day we find that old Nokia in our toolbox and we stop using it as a hammer and want to use it to make a phone call then we have the charger what if that day happens would you get out of my brain like I get it and

• Speaker #4

  and in that example and I am guilty of hoarding certain things and and people know one of my favorite sayings is I'd rather need it or I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it But I think it comes down to the cost of that hoarding. Me having a Nokia phone charger cord in some little box in the back of a closet somewhere, not a big deal, but... If you're carrying cognitive load around as a product owner, product manager, leader, whatever, that has a weight. And that's the whole Marie Kondo method, which I absolutely love. She tells a story in that book about opening this woman's closet. And it felt like the closet was yelling at her because there was just words everywhere. She was bombarded with labels. and words and it was all nicely organized it was all super clean but it was without even knowing it it was overwhelming the owner of that closet to open it once a day twice a day so i think it depends on the cost and stuff like that but yes i'm sure we all have that box or boxes of cables somewhere i actually do i'm looking at it right now i know exactly where ours is

• Speaker #2

  Because there's two of them.

• Speaker #3

  Mine is right here next to me.

• Speaker #4

  But I have culled that box numerous times. And it used to be out of control. And now it's more in control. So I've refined and culled that load. But yeah, I'm a failed minimalist is what I tell everybody.

• Speaker #1

  Failed minimalist. Also called a hoarder.

• Speaker #2

  We have gotten rid of a lot of this lightning chargers because we only have like two products now in our house for that plug. Most of the stuff is C. So we do, we do call it, we do get rid of some. I will say we are trying.

• Speaker #1

  How many product owners, product managers or products have that? There's a lot of load in there, a lot of fluff that you don't really need. Instead of thinking, maybe, maybe I should pick up a broom and just go through.

• Speaker #2

  Kind of like a kid's bedroom where you just take a shovel and a bin and you just shovel all their toys into it and be like, if they want them, they'll go through them and take them. But otherwise, this room's now clean.

• Speaker #1

  Well,

• Speaker #4

  there's a minimalism technique where you take everything and you don't throw it away. You put it in boxes or totes and you put a piece of paper on it with the date and set a date in the future, usually six months. And if you haven't taken that thing out of that box and used it in six months. You clearly don't need it. Make it a year if you're hesitant to let go of stuff. But as product owners, it's even easier because most people have a way to say, oh, I'm going to mark that as removed. And if I ever need it again, whether that's tomorrow or in two years, it's still there. So I think the objections about getting rid of clutter, which is what we're talking about, or excess, are even easier in the digital world.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, you can hide them a lot easier.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. I would recommend to these people, or if you're listening and your, your product looks like something like this, just take shit out, just delete. And if someone really needs it, they'll start screaming again. They'll be like, huh? Last sprint review we had, there was this item on my, uh, on the backlog. That was my item. Where did it go? Oh, right, right, right. Sorry. Let's go through that again. Let's see if it's still valid. Let's see if we have any new.

• Speaker #3

  emerged insights that reminds me of a very good advice you gave me sander i think like a year ago and i was talking with you about a big backlog that was completely out of control no one knew what to do what was in it you told me print it out and burn it and start all over yes

• Speaker #2

  print your backlog burn it down create a new one see we uh we went by date if it hadn't been touched in over a year just gone six months three months depending on how large it is go by date obviously if you haven't touched it in a year you're not going to need it no if it's something that is and and for my retail industry if you're not touching it in six months or three months it's usually not needed well

• Speaker #4

  and there's um there's something cathartic about burning it down like literally and um we were in montana last year and forests thrive with fires like within reason yeah But fire, getting rid of stuff, actually does a number of things. It puts nutrients back in the soil. It lets the things that do survive thrive. And as a property owner, I jokingly call fire, you know, Mother Nature's eraser, because there are certain things where fire is absolutely the best tool. But even fire aside, removal normally does in... all aspects make the things that remain stronger, like whether it's weeding a garden, whether it's taking a plant out of a overgrown bed and putting it by itself where it can get more attention or more nutrients or whatever.

• Speaker #0

  I think that's what we're saying, isn't it? Like, do less, like old Ron Swanson, don't half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I think, if I'm not mistaken, in Australia a couple of years ago, they're having massive forest fires. I'm not mistaken about that. But if I'm not mistaken, the abundance grew back.

• Speaker #2

  No, you're not. well the forest fire started uh it started during the pandemic it was one of those things where it was like okay so the whole of australia is burning we're in a pandemic now what are we going to do they're an island how do you get resources but it did it grew back in abundance yeah except the animals who died sorry yeah we're not discounting any of the humans or businesses or animals affected by fire i'm just saying that removal

• Speaker #0

  of things can be cathartic and cause that what remains to thrive I've said many times when it comes to friends, I'd rather have four quarters than a hundred pennies. Like I'd rather have fewer relationships that are super fun, enjoyable, productive, mutually beneficial than a hundred crappy ones. Yeah.

• Speaker #3

  Makes sense.

• Speaker #2

  Well, why go against nature? I mean, we just had, uh, the forest in the far front yard, you know, kind of cold above all the saplings and things underneath so that the larger trees could thrive and, and grow and be strong. So if mother nature requires this, why are we thinking that it's not something that we would just naturally want to do in our workplace?

• Speaker #3

  Because Larry doesn't garden.

• Speaker #2

  Larry's not a gardener,

• Speaker #1

  yeah. I always like to refer to people as they should be like organizational gardeners. And maybe one of those tools in our organizational gardening should be a fucking blowtorch. Just burn some shit down.

• Speaker #2

  It's also fun. Right? It's cathartic. It's fun. It's super enjoyable to watch something burn.

• Speaker #1

  Depending on who's... but if you're looking at i mean if you're going to be the one who's burned down then maybe not but weed eating with fire is a legit thing mastering agility only works with organizations aligned with our values and that's exactly why we are excited to work with our sponsor scrum

• Speaker #4

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• Speaker #3

  When are we actually agile? When are we there yet? When are we agile? We're now using Jira. We renamed everyone. Now all the project managers are called Scrum Master or PO.

• Speaker #1

  No, I don't think when are we agile is actually a valid question. I think that's a super dumb question to ask. Because then agility becomes the goal. And it shouldn't. Because you can be agile like water and still do dumb shit.

• Speaker #3

  True.

• Speaker #1

  If you're going to flow into the wrong direction and just create more havoc. then why be agile but if we if we're truly embracing agility then we would inspect and adapt so we we wouldn't continuously be flying the wrong direction yeah it's checking i had a quick short discussion with uh ronald phlegm and alexey krivitsky about this and a lot of people seem to think that angel is dead and i don't agree with that i don't think angels that i think the word agile is dead and Agile and the same for change and value and all that stuff is being called out so often that people just start to get allergic to the definition and to the terms and the words and they're just sick of hearing it, which is cool when we're talking about a podcast called Mastering Agility. But don't throw the words in there just for the sake of things. Focus on whatever you need to get done. Focus on the problem. And we as people. Speaking of jumping to conclusions, we jump to solutions so fast without properly understanding the problem we're trying to fix that we do a whole lot of shit that we don't know whether it's actually valuable or not, or whether it's going to create a stepping stone toward a solution. Well,

• Speaker #2

  does that mean that we are not empirically investigating and using the data and we're just jumping to a solution because it's something that we assume is a problem? So that's the problem with the agility then. framework is that we're calling it agile, and we're trying to throw solutions at a problem instead of saying, hey, why don't we look and investigate into, one, what is the problem or problems, and then investigate what is causing them, and then find the solution. But if we're just going to throw solutions out, I mean, I can do that all day.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, but I think that's what happens a lot. And that's when you get back to our previous topic of having so much on your backlog because we're trying to chug. We're just like throwing darts at the problem to see if something sticks. And that's why I think in the future, large conglomerate organizations either are going to die or they're going to survive because they have a large monopoly position. And I think the majority of. Very agile, nimble, small companies are easier to actually maintain and truly be agile and be problem-focused. They just often don't have the support. But the more that you add, the more structure that you add, the more corporate things get, and the harder it actually gets to be agile and adapt to the circumstances and learn from the data that you have because all these layers of communication lines have been added to a level that they're not competent anymore to actually deliver the problems and products. They deliver problems, build products.

• Speaker #2

  I feel like... Well, I feel like you touched on something there was that majority of the people that leave the big corporations that I've worked for are leaving for small ones, small startups and things. And then saying, hey, I get to actually delete safe for my repertoire and I can actually do more agility based work with this small company and these small teams. So maybe that's the thing is that it really should not be scaled. There should be a different framework for those larger companies because. I know that there's a lot in my experience that by the time that an information comes to my team, it had to flow so far down and go through so many lines of telephone and retelling the story that I have to stop and go, that makes no sense. What are you talking about? And I have to then go find the person that initiated it to find the true story. There's just too much noise in between the person trying to give information to all of them that need to receive it.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. Yeah.

• Speaker #3

  Yeah. Go. Yeah. And then worst case, that information arrives at some not empowered product person, like a PO that then receives that information. And by the time it arrives, it has been refined 15 times by different people. A whole plan has been made. And it's like, here you go, three months, make it happen. And then PO's like, well, that isn't exactly agile. Well, now you need to adapt your plans. You're agile, right? You're working in Jira. So go for it. yeah you're ready to adapt adapt to change now exactly that's what that's what we're being promised right people or teams that that work in an agile way they can adapt to change they can you know switch around they're flexible so why can't you do that now yeah if we feel this is more valuable or we want this or larry wants it i

• Speaker #2

  can uh i can make any meeting very very quiet at any point when someone brings up more work for my teams because I just say, no, we're not accepting new work unless you also bring that new work with something you're deleting. You want it all by this deadline and you can't have it all. So you have to find out what the priority is. And all of a sudden, the whole conference call just goes dead because I push back. They don't know how to adjust to that. I was like, well, yeah, I can adjust to change, but you're going to have to adjust to change with me by reprioritizing what it is you want done.

• Speaker #3

  Exactly. It doesn't mean you can clone half of your team. Just because someone had a brainwave under the shower this morning.

• Speaker #1

  So we're going to dangle another one into this lake. I'm going to give you this one, Jim. How do you feel about innovation days?

• Speaker #0

  Like set days, like on a calendar?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  I think that's stupid. We can't constrain innovation. We can't schedule it any more than we can schedule. relaxing or resting or whatever. You need it when you need it. You need it all the time. Life is a balance. And I like the concept of let's make space. Let's make innovation a first class citizen. But I think it's just like forcing team building or camaraderie or saying, you have to come into the office on Wednesdays because that's our day for team collaboration. What if I don't feel like... peopling on Wednesdays. If you want to say you have to be there X amount of days, that's one thing. I have opinions about that, but I like it a lot more than everybody's got to come in on Wednesday because that's when you're going to collaborate and be innovative and be creative or whatever.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. It's like looking at a team and they now innovate. Good luck. All of a sudden, there's my fountain of ideas and they're just going to flow.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, and we've had that at our company is that they require innovation days where we team up and get shit done together. Well, I've been to three of them, I believe. One, yeah, I've been to three. The fourth one I did not attend because I was doing something else. But of those four, only one of them did we actually produce any insight or discuss the product. All the other ones, we just talked to each other and related to each other and got to know each other better. But it was just basically everyone was at the office. but nothing different happens. So when it's forced, if it's only going to result 25% of the time with actual productive discussion, then what's the point of that?

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. If you're going to do innovation, do innovation the way that you think you should be doing innovation and not because you're told to do innovation. If an innovation day works for you, you might as well do it. But just doing it for the sake of doing it because it's been scheduled is not going to be... like i have a magic flow all of a sudden that i can just tap into well have any of you been a part of like a formal uh hackathon i get work yes and how to go it actually went fairly well but it's also because they could do whatever they wanted to like literally anything they wanted to And it was because they they are were the ones that created the environment to do so. And it's not because someone told them to do so. It's because they wanted to do that. And they had all these crazy ideas that they never could actually work on because they need to have stakeholders, you know, stakeholder this. So it was that and innovations. We don't know what's going to come out of that. No, exactly. That's the thing. We need to run some experiments, but we don't have time to do that. Well, then you go figure it out. All right. Then we're going to do a hackathon.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. And that's been my experience. I've been a part of a lot of formal hackathons and they've always been awesome. Some have been better than others. So I think you can schedule stuff like that. But one of the themes that I would take away from all my hackathon experience is, well, we created some constraints. We said, you don't have to worry about work these days. You're going to get paid. And this is ring fence time to go innovate. Many hackathons will give some constraints or guardrails. You can't just go develop a new yard game if you're working at a bank or whatever. But some of them and some of the fun ones like you're describing, I guess, have no constraints. But then they normally have trained facilitators there. That's what I was there to do most of the time. They've got snacks and drinks and speakers and t-shirt. So it's an event. And that's great. But how do you carry some of those concepts through to everyday life? I think that's what so many companies struggle with.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, that. I think it should be part of your backlog, like continuously. I think that's the most optimal way. At least make one or two items minimally part of innovation. Constantly do something that enhances the current product, creates a new product, creates a new business. Something that at least is going to...

• Speaker #2

  do something new rather than just continue to maintain the status quo right well and you got to think about it's people that you're asking to do this so for me i'm going to be more innovative and creative late at night i'm a night owl you asked me to show up somewhere at 9 a.m and be ready to collaborate i'm going to tell you there's nothing that's going to come out of my mouth that's going to be productive i'm on autopilot until at least one or two in the afternoon

• Speaker #0

  then my evening starts because my day starts at 4 45 well and i think the last the last thing that you're making me think about this question is well two things um yesterday when we were talking to david perera i was reminded of the chat we had with tendai about pirates in the navy and innovation theater and all this stuff and we need to re-record with him because just in case any of our listeners are wondering you Riverside had a technical glitch and we lost that episode, but it was great. It was kind of about this internal innovation idea. The other thing I think the job that the four of us can do is demystifying innovation. Come back to the shovel example. You don't have to design a new way of digging holes to innovate. You can take something around you, something you do, and you need to be... in a mindset or put in a mindset or help to be in a mindset of thinking about something differently, like provoking change for the sake of testing. Like, well, I watched a video last night of a guy who said that as children. We just have free play. We can go and do shit without a goal, without an objective, without any rules, without any, I must produce this. And as adults, we lose that. We're told that that's wasteful or that's, you're a child or you're immature or whatever. Innovation, I don't think looks like just coloring on the walls or eating dirt.

• Speaker #1

  but it might be thinking about something like something without constraints yeah but we need those those constraints because we don't trust our developers like how can they do that if they don't have constraints you gotta have that babysitter it's interesting right we don't trust our people that we hired ourselves then maybe it's just a sucky hiring policy trust

• Speaker #0

  is a two-way street like somebody told me today at a client like uh people around here trust me a shocking amount and i told her i said Trust is one of the commodities we trade in. People probably share with all of us some very personal and private things, and they continue to do that, like they did yesterday for some of us, because we've held that trust well. So I don't believe in blind trust. I don't believe that every person that works in every company should just be blindly trusted by leadership. But if people haven't shown a reason to be distrusted, can we trust them more and more and more and more? Well,

• Speaker #2

  I mean, that goes back to the Scrum Guide where it says that the developers own that work. Well, trust them that if they're the ones doing the work, that they own the work, that if you ask them for an update, trust that their update is accurate and not second guess them several times. Because now their update isn't going to be accurate because you just wasted a lot of their time.

• Speaker #0

  I know we've got some parents on here that got to go. So let's go not trust our children to not tear our homes down. So let's wrap it up. But I love this chat. It's going to make me think again, which I do too much of as it is. So I'm not happy with any of you for making me think more about new stuff.

• Speaker #3

  I think sometimes we need to be more like children, honestly. They really ask why. That's the first thing they do. And they just see things. They're so creative, right? They can't reach something. They can't reach the candy on the shelf. And they will just find a way to reach that candy because that's their goal. And they will freaking focus on that. until they have that candy until that chocolate bar is in their hands they will not stop they will not give up they'll be like sneaking around and finding a way that's freaking awesome and how to make it look like they didn't touch it so that on the short view mom doesn't think there's one missing yeah if they're good they will do that yeah some still need to learn that i may have done that with a bottle of tequila when i was about

• Speaker #0

  15 and it's still a funny family story like we did that back in the days at my grandma's they had this this one

• Speaker #3

  cupboard thing where dad's, well, grandpa's like liquor was. And as teenagers, we would sneak in, have a little sip, refill it. And we thought grandpa never noticed.

• Speaker #0

  Was it schnapps? Is schnapps a German thing?

• Speaker #3

  Yeah. I love good schnapps.

• Speaker #1

  Just poke in random holes. Let's see what happens if I click this. But is it this German? Is that German? How about this?

• Speaker #0

  Is it German? That should be a website. Is it German?

• Speaker #1

  Well, you know, removing our trails, that's pretty much what Scrum Masters do, right? Being invisibly present. And I think that's a perfect ending to this episode before we dive into another tangent. Thank you so much, both of you ladies, for joining us today as well. Thanks for having us. And then I'll see you back very soon.

• Speaker #0

  All right. Later, everyone.

• Speaker #2

  Later, gators.

• Speaker #5

  That is all for today. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, let us know by hitting that like button. Share it with friends and colleagues. sharing a message on LinkedIn, joining our warm and welcoming Discord community, or attend recordings as a virtual audience. You can find all the relevant links in the show notes. We hope you'll tune back in for the next episode of the Mastering Agility podcast.