Easy Agile Podcast Ep.13 Rethinking Agile ways of working with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the core

"It was great to chat with Alana and learn from her experience" - Sean Blake

In this episode, I was joined by Alana Mai Mitchell. Alana is a results coach, author, podcast host, and Senior Product Development Manager at one of Australia's largest banks where she works with Agile teams every day.

She has over 13 years experience in digital financial services and coaching. She's spoken live on Channel 10 here in the Australian media and has had her mental health story featured in publications, like The Daily Mail and Mamma Mia. She's the author of a book, Being Brave, and she's the host of the Eastern Influenced Corporate Leader Podcast.

We covered a lot of ground in today's episode. We talked about:

• The importance of putting your hand up and telling your manager when you want to be challenged more and to be exposed to new opportunities.
• Building trust with your team and disclosing some vulnerabilities about yourself.
• Alana's mental health journey over the course of six years, and that journey continues today. What she's learned and what we can learn from her experience to better look after our teams and people in our community.
• Servant leadership and being a generous leader.
• The importance of authenticity and direct communication.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as I did.

Transcript

Sean Blake:

Hello, welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. My name's Sean Blake and I'll be your host today. Today, we have a really interesting guest and a fantastic episode ahead for you. Our guest today is Alana Mai Mitchell. Alana is a results coach, author, podcast host, and Senior Product Development Manager at one of Australia's largest banks where she works with Agile teams every day. She has over 13 years experience in digital financial services and coaching. She's spoken live on Channel 10 here in the Australian media and has had her mental health story featured in publications, like The Daily Mail and Mamma Mia. She's the author of a book, Being Brave, and she's the host of the Eastern Influenced Corporate Leader Podcast.

Sean Blake:

We covered a lot of ground in today's episode. We talked about communication styles. We talked about the importance of putting your hand up and telling your manager when you want to be challenged more and to be exposed to new opportunities. We talked about the importance of building trust with your team and disclosing some vulnerabilities about yourself. We covered Alana's mental health journey over the course of six years, and that journey continues today. What she's learned and what we can learn from her experience to better look after our teams and people in our community. We talked about going first in servant leadership and being a generous leader. The importance of authenticity and direct communication. I hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as I did. Let's get started. Alana, thanks so much for joining us on the Easy Agile Podcast today. It's great to have you here.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Thanks so much, Sean.

Sean Blake:

Before we jump into our conversation, Alana, I'm just going to do an acknowledgement to country. We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we're recording today, the Watiwati people of the Tharawal speaking nation, and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. We extend that same respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples who are tuning in today.

Sean Blake:

Well, Alana, there's so much to talk about today. The background is, we used to be colleagues in the financial services industry. We bumped into each other again out of the blue at Agile Australia '21 Conference, just at the end of last year, which was a great conference. We thought we'd have you on the podcast because you've got so many different stories to tell, but I thought maybe we could start this episode by talking about your career journey and how working with Agile Teams has weaved into your career trajectory.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Yeah, sure. Agile really came into the forefront right back in 2013. I always remember my first Agile training. We had a team day, where I was working at the time. We had an external facilitator come in because the Agile framework was something totally new to financial services at that time. We played Lego. We had each of our wider team was divided into smaller teams, like scrum teams, all this new terminology. Then we were building island and we had an island each and the product owner was feeding user stories in from the customer. Partway through we were building, I think, a rocket launcher and then no, we didn't want to rocket launcher anymore.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

We wanted to tweak it. We had to adapt to things on the fly. I always remember that experience because it was so transformative, just having such a direct and collaborative way of working with people on a project. To this day, of all the Agile trainings and experiences that I've gone through, it's always the ones that are really interactive that I've remembered the most and gained the most and taught them, like learnt them myself as a participant and then taught them to other people as well.

Sean Blake:

Along the way, do you think, you've been through all these training sessions and you've been working with teams on the ground. What have you found from Agile, which is a big topic, but what have you found to be the most transformative and the most helpful from the way that these teams used to do things to the way that they do them now?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I would say communication. What I found was, because I had the contrast with both, I've worked in Water Force style projects and Agile projects as well. I think the biggest part is the amount of effort and rigor that we would go through reviewing requirements and have those be delivered into technology. Then it go quiet and you not hear from technology until they come back with something and they're like, "I've got a baby." You're like, "What kind?" The difference with Agile is that you are able to co-create them.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

You're creating with your customer or your end user, if you're working with an internal user, and then you are also working with technology and finding out what kind of constraints technology has or what kind of ideas they have as well. You have that ability to communicate with the dev. Sometimes your devs are on-shore, often cases they're offshore. We're all remote now, so it doesn't make as much difference as it did when we were in the office. You can really just pull away a lot of the process that gets in between people and have conversations. That's what I really think is the most transformative part.

Sean Blake:

Great. Yeah, so that communication. Do you feel like the communication throughout COVID and working remotely has been more challenging? Are you one of those people that find those face-to-face communication skills, you really prefer the face-to-face or has remote been okay for you? Because I know some people have struggled. Some people have found it easier to be on Zoom all the time.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Well, I mean, when I go in the office and we have that brief time where we were back in the office, I had a smile on my face the whole time. Because I just love seeing people and I'd go around and walk over to my team and say, "Hey, how are you going?" Just catch up with them. I think the one piece that's missing for me in the remote working whilst there's greater flexibility, you can do multiple things at the same time. You focus a lot of your work. You can get a lot more done quicker. I do find that informal relationship building, you need to actually schedule in time or pick up the phone out of the blue and connect with someone.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Whereas in the office, I would just find that because people were there and I don't know, you might be having lunch at the same time or going downstairs for something at the same time or even the corridor conversations that happen after the meeting where you can just chase someone or ask someone a question or they chase you and you just get things done. It's just different. I'd say it's more, the catch ups are more scheduled and formal, I find in a remote work setting.

Sean Blake:

I feel the same way. I feel the small talk and the talk about the weekend on Zoom is much harder for me and much more tiring to try and sustain that than in person. It becomes more naturally. I really have to make a big effort, especially on one-to-ones with people in the team when I'm trying to check in on their health and wellbeing and how they're going at work. I just find that much more exhausting than what I do in person. I think it's just those nonverbal communication skills and you can see people's body language easier when you're in the office.

Sean Blake:

Someone's slumped at their chair for six hours out of a seven-hour work day. Then you're like, "Oh, something's wrong." If you know that you've got to get on Zoom and try and pretend to be happy and that everything's okay, then you can fake it a little bit easier. Of course, there's loads of benefits to remote work, as you say. That human element personally, I find it's much more challenging to replicate using digital tools. Maybe there'll be more innovation that comes, but the time will tell on that.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Yeah. On that, I wanted to add some of my friends in the technology space. Talking about the metaverse and how at the moment you and I are having this conversation through screens. I'm in my space, in my house, and you can see my painting in the background and I can see that you've got a podcast set up. One of my friends was talking about how, he's an architect, and so he was thinking about how we create digital spaces. When we meet digitally, if we were meeting as our avatar, what kind of space would facilitate better conversation? That blew my mind when he was talking about that. I was like, "Oh, I hadn't even thought of that." Absolutely, you could meet in a virtual space because we're doing what we've got with the tools that we have today, but the tools can change.

Sean Blake:

I guess it's almost certain they will change. I can't see that Zoom will be the market leader forever. I'm sure there'll be things that come along very soon that will try and replicate some of those physical experiences that we miss so much of being in the office and having those social experiences together. Alana, I'm wondering about the teams that you work with now or in the past, those Agile teams, do you have any tips for people who are new to Agile teams or maybe they're coming in?

Sean Blake:

They want to improve their communication, whether they're remote or in office, and improve their organization's Agile maturity, but they're just finding it a bit of a struggle. Do you have any tips for people who are just, they're butting their heads up against the wall and they can't seem to make progress with some of those patterns and habits that you talked about, like taking requirements away and not knowing what's happening for so many months or years before you hear something back from technology? How do you actually start to influence that culture and behavior, if you're new to Agile?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I'm going to take a slightly different approach on that to answer your question. Because the thing that came to mind for me was when I in Outward Bound, which is a remote wilderness organization in 2012 in the US. I was instructing there. One of the frameworks that they use is William Glass' Choice Theory. Choice Theory talks about that we have five needs, and I'll put myself on the spot. Well, I'll mention some of them, because I can't remember all of them. There's like need for fun. Some people have a high fun need. Then there's like need for power, like feeling powerful. There's like, love and belonging, is another important need. There's two others, which I can't recall right now. I think when you are coming out of a situation, from a perspective, you've tried a couple of times when you're approaching it, and not getting anywhere, I would have a look at what needs am I, myself looking to get met out of this communication.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Then on the flip-side, what needs is my communication partner or the team that I'm working with? What is the most important need for them? As we were talking about remote working, like the fun need. People love to have fun and you can actually have fun at work. It doesn't need to be separate. Thinking about like, if you have a high fun need, and you also notice your team has that as well. How can you address that in your communication style or bring out some kind of activities that can bring that to life? I would always go back to what are my needs and what are the needs of other people that I'm working with? Because when you're working with different teams, they have different agendas, they have different goals. If you can figure out what you have in common, it's a lot easier to bring another team or people in those team on the journey, once you figured out what the common ground is.

Sean Blake:

That's great advice. Think about it from their point of view, rather than just what you need and your own agenda and try and adapt to your approach to them. That's really good. I saw this quote recently, Alana, which reminded me a little bit about your mental health journey, which we'll talk about more in a moment. The quote was about, when you're looking for a new role or a new job, you shouldn't just look for a great company to work for. You should look for a great manager to work for, because the influence and your experience as an employee, working for a manager, is often so much more important than and influential than just picking a great or a well-known company to work for. Have you found that to be true in your own career?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Oh, yeah. I have found that some really phenomenal leaders. In a previous organization that I was working in, I like to keep learning and growing all the time. In previous roles, sometimes I get bored. It happens. That's really valuable to organizations because I'm constantly looking at where to improve things. I had a time where my manager was focused on other things and learning and development wasn't as important. Then I had a lady named Christina come in and Christina was like fire. She was just, "This is what we got to do." Open to change, really clear communicator, she's from the US. She's really direct in a compassionate way and she's really progressive as well. I found because of her influence in the organization.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Also, through my willingness to put my hand up and say, "I'm willing to participate." Which is, for the people who are tuning in, it's not just about the leader creating the opportunities for you and saying, "Hey, present to this general manager forum or executive general manager forum." Or whatever it is. It's also about you saying, "Hey, I'm willing and I'd love to." And communicating what you are after. We met on that path and I had some of the most, stronger success working with Christina. I was fortunate at that the culture was also really great. The immediate team culture needed to shift as well, which is part of why Christina came on board, and the company culture is really good.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I would say on the point on like manager over culture is that when you are someone who is progressive and you're wanting to shape the culture for the better, you're going to find cultures that need a little attention or need a little work or things that aren't quite as performing as well as they are. With the sales perspective, opportunity plus. If you go to a culture and everything's amazing, you're sure you can make it a little bit more amazing. Really, when you have the support of your manager, who's, you see these initiatives and they're going to say, "Okay, go for it. I've got this GM forum coming up that you can present at, or let's find your sponsor. Let's find your mentor." That the two of you working as a team can be at the forefront of the new culture, which impacts the rest of the culture.

Sean Blake:

Interesting. I don't know if I've ever been in a culture that's perfect and overachieving and too good, but absolutely you can get too comfortable and complacent in roles and you can almost just be a little bit shy from putting your hand up for those opportunities. Do you think there's many cultures out there that are too good? How do you assess the quality of a culture before you accept the role and start working in that team?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Oh, good question. I always asked, what's the vision and how does it relate to this role? I want to hear it from the hiring manager before I join a company. What I'm looking for is I'm asking that question to multiple people. I'm looking for a congruence, about the hiring manager sees a similar story as to what their peer, who's maybe interviewing in the second interview or their leader in the third interview. I'm looking for those things to match up, because that's telling me there's consistency. It's just, I'm getting the same story. That they're also communicating well. That would be a sign to me. Yeah, that's about what I do.

Sean Blake:

That's good. Good tip. Alana, you have a quote on your website, which talks about your mental health journey. It says, "I have totally recovered from five mental health breakdowns across six years, where doctors once talk would me, I would be homeless." That sounds like a lot of hardship and a lot of sweat and tears and pain over many years. Do you want to walk us through a little bit of that journey and what you've learned about yourself through those experiences?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Oh, yeah. Thanks for pulling that out from the site, Sean. In 2013, I started to notice that things weren't right. I wasn't feeling myself. I sought help from a counselor, career counselor. Because I thought, "Is it my career?" I said, "Am I not in the right job?" I spoke to a psychiatrist and a psychologist and they did a little bit of an investigation, but no one really got to what was going on. Then I made some quick decisions in my career, which I look back on and I think, "Wow, I really was in the throes of it and not thinking clearly at all when I made those choices." I found myself, about November 2014, in between roles. As someone who was previously really ambitious, like high-achiever, chronic high-achiever without having a role and a career prospect at the moment back then was a big deal.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I had what was called a psychotic episode. Essentially, that was like me, believing deluded thoughts and not having a really strong grip on reality, having some story going on in my head that wasn't true at all. It ended up because I was taken by ambulance to hospital. Then still at that point, people didn't really know what was going on. I was a in mental health ward and came out from that, started on medication, which improved things. I thought, and this is part of why I had the multiple psychotic episodes, is that I thought that the stress of being in between jobs or stressful situations at work, I thought they were the triggers for the psychotic episodes.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I would take the medication for a while, get better temporarily, think everything was normal, stop the medication. Then six months later I would have another breakdown. Then that happened over six years and I realized towards the fifth and final, so that was when I was running a coaching business that had a few clients at the start and then we didn't have any clients at all. I essentially ran out of money and got into debt. Then when the doctor learned about my financial situation, he said, "You're going to be homeless." I was so offended. I was like, "How dare you." I was like, "No, I will not. I will not." I look back now and I'm so thankful for him sharing that with me, because he provided me with a choice. Something to push against and choose another way. He activated my will, from me going from being offended to being thankful, where I'm at today.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I charted my way out of that. Now, I have well-managed schizophrenia and I take medication. I'll be taking medication for the rest of my life. It's part of who I am. I don't experience like, some people have a lot of appreciation for, because I know that they're in their mental health journey. It's not all smooth sailing, even after they have an answer of a diagnosis. It still can be challenging in there's up days and down days. For me, I'm consistent. It's been now coming up to four years since the doctor and I had that conversation in the hospital. Life is just incredible since then.

Sean Blake:

That's great. I'm so happy to hear that. Thank you for sharing your story with our audience. I think it's really important, isn't it? To be vulnerable and to share the truth about things that have happened in the past. Do you think that there's something that we can learn? With the people that you work with now, do you have a clearer understanding or are you looking for signs of people in your life who might be struggling with some of the similar issues and what can we do as people in our own communities and working with teams to look out for each other and to better support each other with some of these mental health issues front of mind so that we can be more supportive?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I always listen for and check in with how the team is doing and it's not just, you ask how are you, and you're listening for more than what they say. If they say they're good, how are they saying it? We had that conversation before about the remote working and it's different. To come to the, are you okay, and we have the, are you okay days. Someone asked me in the office where we were actually working together. They're like, "Are you okay, Alana?" I couldn't answer her. It's not always as simple as getting a no, sometimes it's, you don't get a response. Then the alarm does go off. I really think taking in all the points of interaction that you have with someone and aligning to, is that consistent with how do they were, is there something different, check in with them, how is it going? If you're having a conversation, great. If they're sharing with you, even better.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

If they're not, you can always just check in with yourself and being like, "Is it something you need?" As to, why are they not sharing or is that something that's going on with them as well? The other piece I wanted to tie it, bring it back to the Agile leadership piece and from the conference that Agile Australia that we were at. I really see that building trust with teams is so key. We're in this remote working environment or hybrid working environment, depending on what office you're in. It really is important to build trust with your team. One of the quickest ways you can do that is by sharing vulnerably with what you have to share. I don't mean going for exposure and putting yourself in vulnerable situations where you are uncomfortable with what you share.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

It's disclosure, so it's something that you're 100% comfortable within yourself, and you've accepted it within yourself and you share that with your team in openness. When you do that, you see that your team also, they hear it and they mirror it as well. You go first and they share. The mental health example, I shared that on LinkedIn. I've shared it in situations with my team. Then I've been invited to talks and I've had people approach me. It really builds without having to go through a lot of, I ask this thing of this person, do they deliver it above and beyond expectations when I ask for it? How many times do you need to go through that process before you trust someone versus you, coming out and creating an environment of trust through of vulnerability? I do caveat that it's like not oversharing, it's sharing what you're comfortable with at that point in time, and that might change as you go on.

Sean Blake:

Interesting. Does this apply to leaders as well? I know that you've spoken about being a generous leader in the past, and that reminds me of servant leadership, which is another kind of Agile phrase that you hear come up quite a lot. This idea of going first, disclosing what you're comfortable with to your team, even as a leader, showing vulnerability is really important. I know in my experience, if you can share some of the honest and harsh realities of what it's like to be in your position, then your team are more empathetic with the challenges that you have.

Sean Blake:

Because a lot of people assume that when you are in a position of leadership and responsibility, then things are easier because you can just delegate or you've got budget to solve some of these problems, but it's not actually the reality of it. The reality of it is you struggle with things just like anyone else. By sharing and disclosing things with people at all levels of the organization, then that helps to build empathy and a bit more care and support no matter what level you're at. Are there other things or habits or qualities of a generous leader or a servant leader that you've seen or that you try and model or encourage?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

The big one that stands out for me is authenticity. Really knowing yourself, knowing what your leadership style is, knowing what your challenges are, what your strengths are, what you're working on and being authentic about that. When you feel something, sharing what you feel, not having to feel like you need to say it a different way or sugarcoat it, being able to speak your mind in a way that's direct and compassionate. We're not going for like arrogance, and we're not going for wishy washy. We're going for direct and compassionate, then share what's in your heart, so authenticity. Those are the leaders that you, I'm so glad you brought up empathy because when you're vulnerable, empathetic, and authentic, those are the leaders that really stand out for you and me.

Sean Blake:

That's great advice. Authenticity, direct communication, build empathy. All right, thanks for sharing that.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

You're welcome.

Sean Blake:

Alana, how did you decide that you wanted to write a book about some of your experiences and can you tell us about how your book, Being Brave, has changed your life and how you think about sharing your story?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I naturally have a lot of things going on. I love projects. I love it, that's why I'm in projects. Because I love setting a goal and reaching it. The company I was working at had done a number of workshops and I got to a point where I didn't have as many activities going on. I was like, "Oh, that's really interesting. I don't have as much stuff going on." This was just at the start of the pandemic in 2020. A friend, a really dear friend of mine said, "Try meditation. Try meditation daily." I meditated each day and I had been surrounded, my network is very much of a coaching network. I know a lot of coaches and they had written their own books as well. I was on the radar and I was meditating and I got the idea to write a personal memoir about my story.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

It's really interesting that even in through that process of doing a lot of personal development work and going through the process of writing the story, there were still some things in that, that I wasn't quite comfortable owning yet. It's been, since I wrote the book that I've accepted that. In a book, if people read it, I talk about psychotic episodes. I don't talk about schizophrenia because it was all later when I was asked to do a media thing about schizophrenia, that I was like, "Okay, yep. Time to own that." I feel like the book at a point in time had me accept all that had happened with unconditional love and then to still, modeling that piece of going for disclosure and not exposure. Still, I had my fragility on what I wasn't ready to disclose yet. Since then, that had progressed further.

Sean Blake:

That's awesome. That therapy you're sitting down to write the story actually helped flesh out the story itself and you came to terms with some of those things that happened. What has been the reception to the book?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Most people, when they pick up the book, it's a short book, so some people even call it a booklet, because it's 11,000 words. It's short. They say, "Wow, I read that in an hour and a half, in one sitting. I couldn't put it down." someone had said, "It's the story of the famous rising from the ashes." They can take a lot of inspiration from it. The point of the book and a lot of what we're talking about vulnerability is going first as the leader. You set an example that others can follow in, so that will flow into their lives as well. The book is set out with a story and a few questions at the end that people can go through for their own insight.

Sean Blake:

Great, awesome. Alana, is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience before we start wrapping up the episode today?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I did, because I know this is about Agile more so, and that's a really important topic to your audience. I did write and have a think about after that conference we went to, Agile Australia, about what is beyond the Spotify model? Because the Spotify model is very, word is spoken about it at the moment with the crews and the tribes and squads of course, and the chapter lead models and all that they have, which I'm sure everyone tuned in would be really familiar with. I started to think about, what are the things that are relevant beyond the Spotify model? What's next? If your organization is at a point where you've already at your job at some of that, and you're looking for what's next. I did write an article about that. It's on LinkedIn, and I'll give it to you. If you want to, you can put it in the show notes.

Sean Blake:

That's awesome. We will definitely do that. Where can people go to find out more about you? Where can they buy your book or visit your website?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

My site is www.alanamaimitchell.com. On there is more about my story. There's a few things about coaching, which may be relevant. I'm not coaching at the moment, I'm more focused on my career in financial services. Then the book is on Amazon and it's in English and also in Spanish. There's the audio book and also the print book and the eBook.

Sean Blake:

Awesome. Well, Alana, thanks for disclosing what you've disclosed today and sharing your story with us. I've learned a lot about your experiences, and I've got a lot to think about, to reflect on, how to be a more generous leader. Thanks for spending time with us and being part of the Easy Agile Podcast.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

You're so welcome. Thanks for having me on the show, Sean.

Sean Blake:

Thanks, Alana.

Dave Elkan, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Easy Agile is joined by Jean-Philippe Comeau Principal Customer Success Advocate at Adaptavist.

"Hearing from JP is a sure-fire way to get excited about Atlassian Team '23. We spoke about where we are hoping to see conversations focus + more."

JP is passionate about teamwork, meeting new people, presentations of all kinds - loves a microphone and a captive audience, new technologies and most of all problem-solving.

In this episode, JP and Dave are talking about one of the most anticipated events in the tech calendar - Atlassian’s Team23! They’re talking about what to expect, tips for first timers and what they’re hoping to take away from the event.

They also dive into the future of work and the significance of coming together as a team.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Transcript:

Dave Elkan:

Hi, all, and welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. My name is Dave Elkan and I'm co-founder and co-CEO here at Easy Agile. Before we begin, Easy Agile would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast today, the people of the Dharawal speaking country. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that same respect to all Aboriginal, Torres State Islander and First Nations people joining us today. Today I am joined by Jean-Philippe Comeau or JP. JP is the principal customer success advocate at Adaptavist and is passionate about teamwork, meeting new people, presentations of all kinds, loves a microphone and a captive audience, this podcast definitely fits that mold, new technologies, and most of all, problem-solving. JP, thanks so much for being with us today.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Thanks for inviting me.

Dave Elkan:

Hey, no worries. It's great to have you on. We want to take some time today just to talk through Atlassian Team '23. The ecosystem is gearing up for one of the biggest events of the calendar and the ultimate event for modern teamwork. You've been to a few Atlassian Team events before and last year being the first one back in a while. Quebec to Las Vegas is quiet a gear change. What are your tips for people attending Team for the first time?

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Ooh, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, yeah, Teams to me is a massive event. It's a beautiful moment to actually take in everything that has happened in last year for Atlassian. What I mean by that is actually more and more what's happening with Atlassian is actually what's happening in the world of work. So I think it's just a great time to reassess where you're at. So for me, it's about planning out the main things you want to hit and don't overcrowd your schedule. That's a mistake I made the first time was just I wanted to see the most of everything and I was like, "Yeah, I can absolutely do back to back to back. It's going to be fine. I'll be walking from one thing to another." Truth is after talk, you'll have some questions. Some things will popped-up. "Oh, that's interesting. I could maybe explore that."

You're going to want to do maybe some floor hunting, which is like, hey, looking through the partners. Maybe you've heard about something like an app that you really want to go look at or something like that. So, that's always going to happen and then you're going to miss that next talk. So make sure that what you highlight is really things you want to see and plan according to that. That to me is the number one thing. Don't try to do it all. Do what you feel is really, really important than the rest. Try to make it work because it's going to be a lot of walking, a lot of listening, a lot of talking. The second thing which I remind everybody is to hydrate, get a bottle of water. There's going to be plenty over there, but everybody's going to have their own branded bottle of water, so don't worry about having one or not, but get one and just hydrate. I mean, we all get very busy during the day and we all know how the nights can go, so keep drinking some water. Yeah, those are my two tips.

Dave Elkan:

That's great advice. I think hydration is certainly something to consider. I remember particularly a wall of donuts at one point distracting me from good habits like that. So yeah, it's really important to make sure you've got the basics in line. What are you most looking forward to from the lineup at Team '23?

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah. I mean, every year the keynotes are what's going to hit the most. Obviously, getting a chance to hear James Cameron talk is going to be very, very interesting. I think especially in the year of Avatar 2 is just great timing, obviously probably planned. He's probably on a tour, but it's going to be really great to hear some stories of how that movie came about. It's been a long time in the making, probably the closest thing we got to really long development on a film. It feels like a long software development cycle thing. That's a very long time. And then hearing Van talk about some of the things that he's seeing in today's world. Van Joseph, I believe, is the name of the second talker, and remember seeing him a lot on the CNN broadcast and stuff during the elections and the impact that he brought to the whole broadcast was quite something. It'd be very interesting to hear them talk.

And then as far as maybe not the big ticket items, really interested to... I think this is the year where the practices on the different tracks that Atlassian usually promotes, I think this is the year what they really start to hit. What I mean by that is I think before this year, so when you look at last year's Team and then before that, tracks were kind of like wishy-washy. Now, they actually have the products to back them. I think JSM's in a very, very good spot. I think their agile tooling is in a very good spot. I think their DevOps, which is what I expect, is going to be pushed the most, or DevOps tooling with the Jira product discovery and all their Point A stuff is got to be where it's at. So I think you're going to get really good talks on those practices. I think that's going to be the year where the tracks actually make a ton of sense and are very valuable to people.

Dave Elkan:

Absolutely. Thanks for sharing. It's really interesting. Yourself, you're a Canadian and James Cameron is a Canadian and he's talking about creating the impossible, and I think that's a theme that's coming through and what Atlassian is promoting and bringing that through. It's really interesting to see or hear you talk about the both building movies and media and CNN, the reference there, and how that can apply with a strongly software development-based audience. It's really interesting to see that building a movie is a very much a waterfall process in that you have this huge deliverable at the end, but I know that there are Pixar, for example, use this concept of Demo Trusts, we call them, or the Pixar Demo Trust. Yeah. So essentially you can test along the way as you go before you deliver this huge thing. It's really intriguing to think what we're going to hear from James in regards to how he builds these amazing projects.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah, I think you're spot on. So I'm actually a huge Marvel fan. I don't have my book with me, but the Creativity, Inc. is a book that I love by Ed Catmull and how they built Pixar as a business, as a delivery team, not just about the movie side of it, the creative side of it, but how do you bring creativity into a more structured world that is the corporate world kind of thing, which they're now a part of? So, very interesting that you bring that up because I'm very fascinated by their process as well. I think they were the pioneers in the movie-making business or industry into bringing the agile methodologies or thinking to movie-making.

Now, what would happen historically in movies? Okay. So you don't know this, but my background is actually enacting. So when I started, when I studied, when I was a young lad, young adult, let's put it that way, I wanted to be an actor and then things changed. Obviously, I am not a prolific actor. So I'm very, very passionate about the movie-making industry. Movies historically has always been about you shoot, you shoot, you shoot, to develop, develop, develop, and then at the end, you cut it. So you make mistakes. So like we said, very, very waterfally. I think now that technology is almost like 50 to 60% of a movie now more days... If you look at Marvel movies and all that, you could argue it's 50 to 60% is going to be computer-generated, which can be a bad or good thing. Now, that I'm not going to get into that debate.

The nature of previz and all the animation work that goes behind it makes the process more agile, meaning that what they're going to do is they're going to build for a week and then they're going to review the film that's been made and then they're going to correct and do it again, right? So already you got your feedback loop going. You got your process. You got your sprints going. I can map all that out to some agile processes and I wouldn't be surprised that you're looking at something that are looking to scale up. You could even argue what are you guys going to do for your scaling methodologies? There's a lot of things that are very interesting.

I think going back to our first point, sorry, I really went on a tangent here, but going back to Avatar, when you have such a long cycle and you have a movie that's built, that one is heavily computer-generated. I mean, every actor has stuff on their face and they're acting in a blank studio. Now you're talking about agile processes because if you're building hours and hours and hours of work and you're just building and building and building and never review, I can't... Maybe James will say that's how they did it, and I'll be like, "Well, you guys were... It's very difficult. You made your life very, very difficult." But it'd be very interesting to hear because I cannot imagine them not going into some type of an agile way of building this movie.

Dave Elkan:

Oh, of course. I think that if you imagine the cutting room floor, it's an old adage and literally they used to cut the film and they'd leave it on the floor as that's something we're not doing anymore. And so, I dare say that there's a vast amount of film which is thrown away and redone. I feel that if we could see past that to this beautiful thing that they're doing behind the scenes, which is testing and iterating on their shots, it's actually quite a simple concept to apply these agile processes to filmmaking. It's just at the end you have got this big bang, same in game production. When you produce a game, you cut back. People do early access, which is fantastic. You can't early access a movie.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

No, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. Going back to Pixar, that reference, I actually made the mistake. It's not actually the Demo Trust. So this is the Playbook by Atlassian. There's a play called Demo Trust, but it's the Brains Trust and it's bringing together the team to talk through does this fulfill the vision of Pixar? Does this make Pixar Pixar? And helping the team understand, so directors get that ingrained Pixarness through that process. So yeah, there's a whole team behind the scenes here. There's not one person who's just driving this at the director level. There's actually a whole team of people collaborating on this movie. So I'm really intrigued to hear that from James to hear how the teamwork comes out.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah. I think when you look at a movie like Avatar, again, another thing that we don't think about is the connecting remote teams, which is a big, big part of what we do in 2023 is connecting remote teams so that they feel they're working on one project. When you have a movie like Avatar, your VFX is going to be somewhere. Your actors are going to be another place. And then you're going to have music and sound's going to be somewhere else. Your editors are probably going to be somewhere else. And so, there's a lot of remote work that you do. How do you bring all that together?

I remember watching the old documentaries around the Lord of the Rings movies, and they were literally flying people in and out with the actual roll of films because they were so afraid that people would steal them and so that they wouldn't put it on the internet and they would actually carry them around. So they had to fly from London to New Zealand to... It's kind of nuts when you think about it in 2023. Really, you had to take a 10-hour flight just to get your film across? It's probably easier also with the data, just the bandwidth and everything. So I think that's also going to be an interesting part is how did you connect teams?

You brought up a great point around the Pixar way or that's how they call it, the Pixar way. When you think about that, there's some really, really cool ideas behind bringing a team together and rallying them around one project. I think as teams get more remote and distanced from products and things that they're working on, and I do it myself at work. Things become generic. At some point, you're just doing the same thing over and over again. You lose touch a little bit with the work that you do. I think it's a beautiful thing to be able to rally a team around a project and say like, "Do you believe in this project? I believe in this project. Do you believe in this project?" And making sure the team does and if they don't, why don't you? What's preventing you from that? I think there's a lot of good conversations, sorry, that can come from that. Yeah.

Dave Elkan:

Absolutely. So yeah, you talk about going more remote. Is that a trend you're seeing, that we're continuing to see more and more teams go remote, or are we seeing a reversal of that to some extent?

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

It depends on what sphere you're working with, or in my position, I get to touch everything. I tend to gravitate towards the more creative teams of gaming and software development and stuff. I do work with banks. I do work with, well, corporate America, the classic suit and tie kind of places, everything. I see everything. There is absolutely out right now a battle of old versus new, old ways of working, new ways of working. There's a huge clash happening. I to this day do not know who's going to win, because even the big Silicon Valleys, I mean, we are all seeing what's happening with Apple and them putting mandatory office dates and stuff like that. You see that from an executive that is leading maybe one of the more bleeding edge companies in the world, but he's still an old school vibe of creativity.

I hate bringing it back to Pixar. I'm going to bring it back to Pixar. They have such a great office. So like I said, I'm very fascinated about what they do. They call it unplanned creativity. They truly believe that unplanned creativity happens in the office, and when you have unplanned meetings, unplanned interactions. So one of the things that they did, it's now very common, but when I was 14 years old and I was reading about them, I was like, "Oh my God, these are such cool things to do," they were doing those ping-pong places and activities and games to get people to play together and start talking about what they were doing.

And then all of a sudden you got an engineer talking to a VFX artist that's talking to a 3D or conceptual artist, that's like they would never meet in a meeting or anything like that. But because they're playing ping-pong and throwing ideas around and all of a sudden they're like, "Hey, maybe we could build this thing. That'd be amazing." Because the artist saying, "Well, now I could do clouds this way. Yeah. Nuts, I could create clouds that look like this." Then the engineer goes, "Well, you can just tweak a little bit of things."

Anyways, so I think there's this old school mentality at this. It's a question I've asked myself in our Slacks and where we talk about work. I don't know what the future is for unplanned creativity. I don't know how you recreate that in a virtual world. I think it's a big problem that some software companies have tackled with some tools. I don't know how you force someone to sit behind a computer and do something that's unplanned. How do I stumble across some... I don't know. But yeah, I think there's a bit of that in the old school mentality. I need people in an office so that they can meet and they can interact together. I still struggle to find where they're wrong, let's put it that way. I don't know where they're wrong about that theory of when you're with someone, when you're with people things happen in a different way.

Dave Elkan:

I can't agree more. I think that if I have any perspective on this, it's that there is not... Often, it's not a black and white or a zero sum kind of game. It's a combination of things that will occur and that will move forward for better or for worse. You can look back in history to Bell Labs and the creation of the semiconductor and the way that the building was designed essentially to allow people to walk past and have cross-collaboration and cross-functional conversations. Have you ever considered that the unplanned creativity that Pixar was talking about was actually planned-unplanned creativity, so they made these spaces on purpose? How can we make things on purpose to have things unknown to us happen?

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah. Yeah. Actually, you're absolutely right. I mean, yeah, they built the Pixar offices this way because of that. To me, that is the secret. If someone finds it, it's like the caramel milk or whatever, just bottle it up and sell it to people, I guess. I don't know. I have no idea what the answer is. I've looked and it's... There's an app out there. I can't remember the name of the app, but you're like a 2D sprite and it looks like an NES game and you're moving around from places to places. You can decorate your office. It's got this vibe of Animal Crossing, which is a game by Nintendo where you can just create stuff and people can visit your island and all that.

You can do that with your office space and then you can create a common area where people walking. When you look at it in a video, it's brilliant. Great, I can actually be in the office without being in the office. It has this whole technology of proximity. So if you're having a conversation with someone in an open area, people could walk by and hear what you're saying and join in. Beautiful technology, doesn't work with the humans when you really think about it. Why would I go online to walk around an office to go talk? I'll ping you on Slack, it'll be easier. All right. I don't need to walk through your office. So it's like I don't know what the secret is.

Yeah, you're right, it is planned in a way. I think we do that. I don't know for you guys at Easy Agile, how you do it. In Adaptavist, we do like to travel with teams. So whenever we do things, even if it's customer work or if we're going for an event or something, we try to make it a point to make it about also us and what we do. So we rarely traveled alone. If I'm going to a customer, we're trying to get two consultants in there, or what I'm trying to say is bring more people. It's a point, I think, Adaptavist is trying to make and I think that's what Simon, our CEO, is trying to make is use these opportunities to be with people. I think it's a beautiful thing, but it's one of the myriad of solutions. I don't know. I really don't know. What do you think? What are your thoughts on this?

Dave Elkan:

Oh, I can share how we work at Easy Agile. So here I am today in the office. This is a great place for me to do this recording. We have a room for about 50 people here in the office in Wollongong, south of Sydney. We have about 10 to 15 who usually arrive on a daily basis, and that's great. We don't mind. We love people working from home and working away, which is more convenient and relaxing for them. At the same time, we do have quarterly plan, like planning sessions that we go to. We have Advanced Easy Agile every quarter. We come together in person. We've strategically ensured that we hire in a way so that's possible, so people aren't flying across vast sways of ocean to get to this conversation. In a way, it's planned-unplanned. So we do our planning ahead of time.

When we come for Advanced Easy Agile, we'll have something that we want to either upskill the team with or whatever, and then we'll have some team bonding where people can choose from a range of different activities they want to do together. And so, for us, it's more about getting together in person because we know that's really valuable to both build an understanding of each other as a team and to build that rapport. It can't be done over Zoom to an extent. So, absolutely, our business runs entirely in a remote-friendly way and we don't rely on people to be in person, in sync in person to move forward. However, we do see there's a great value there. So we try to live in both worlds and we get the benefit from both of them. Yeah. And so, that's one thing that can work. It's not for everybody. If you have a truly distributed global business, it's not exactly easy or affordable to bring everybody together on a quarterly basis.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah. I think it's beautiful though. So I've been in Adaptavist for close to six... I'm on my sixth year now and we used to be able to do... We didn't do quarterly. We did a yearly thing at the end of the year where everybody would get together. We called it Winter Con for the last two years, which I actually loved the idea, which was very much we could pitch ideas of what we wanted to talk about. It could be about work, could be about customers, could be about last year, whatever you wanted to talk about, could be about yourself, could be about a cool thing you did this year, whatever. We had a voting system, but really pretty much anyone that said any, you could get in.

You could just walk around and it was literally a conference center. We'd set up some rooms and you could walk in, look at a presentation, literally like Teams or whatever. It was the best experience every time that we did that. I love these because there's value. There's an ROI in having everybody learning and upskilling and breaking down these silos of, "Hey, I never worked with marketing, but here's an hour talk around something we did in marketing. I really want to join," and all these things. That's great. There was also the unplanned ROI, where you were coming out of there with multiple ideas of like, "Oh, I could explore this. We could explore that. I got this meeting set in Jan now that whenever I come back in January, we're going to be talking about this thing that we talked about for cloud migrations." All that was happening at Winter Con.

Now, we grew exponentially post-COVID, well, during and post. So while COVID was happening and all of a sudden everybody wanted work. And then as companies that were remote, I think a lot of the companies that were remote grew during COVID versus because companies that were local or anything, they slowly diluted down a little bit, let's put it that way. As we grew, we can't support that anymore as a one-time thing where you'd have... We're close to a thousand now. There's a lot of people to move and a lot of conferences, a lot of conference rooms and presentations and stuff that we just can't accommodate. So, I miss it a lot. We've been doing it remotely, but like you said, it's not the same to go on a Zoom call.

I remember sitting down in these presentations and you're sitting down next to people that someone from Arkansas, someone from Cambridge, and you start talking. Yeah, you're listening to conference, but we all know what happens when you're listening to a presentation. You start talking like, "Yeah, that's an interesting idea. What did you do last weekend?" You start talking. Those are things you can't do on Zoom. You can't really reproduce that on Zoom. It's not going to happen really and I miss that dearly. I don't know what the solution is when you have these kind of global distribution. I mean, I guess you do in a smaller way, maybe all of North America meet up or things like that, but it's just not the same, not the same at all. I think it's beautiful that you guys can still do these because everybody's close by. I think it's really nice.

Dave Elkan:

Oh, thanks. Yeah, it's something we're hoping to hold onto as long as we can. We understand that these things don't scale. At one point, we'll have to break it into different events so that people can have, I think, a higher level of involvement in that. If you have too many people at the same time, it can be just a bit read only, the way I see it. It's as if to seek participant.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

That's nice. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

Dave Elkan:

So I'd love to just quickly touch back on Atlassian Team '23.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

I'm sorry.

Dave Elkan:

You did mention at the beginning... That's all right. We'll get there. There's these new apps, especially in the DevOps tooling space that Atlassian's working on, so Discovery. Can you just talk to me a little bit more about what you see there and why that's coming to fruition now?

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah, I think it's all about cloud. I'll be the first to say that big fan of data center, big fan of on-prem. That's how I learned the Atlassian tool set. So, a little skeptical when cloud came about. As it grew and it got better, it got better, that was great. I think it's now at a mature spot where the Point A program, which is where all of these tools are coming out of, so the product Discovery, Atlas and all that, those are the fruits of cloud. That's because now that we have cloud, they can churn out products and try things and see if they stick or not. I think that's why I think this year is the year where I think the program is mature enough. Migration's ready. I mean, we're one year out of server end-of-life. I think we're finally in a place where we can actually talk about all these opportunities. Most of the people at the conference will be able to get value from it.

I remember last year where talks were heavily around JSM and all the cool things it would do, but you still had a lot of people on server, still had a lot of people on data center. So it fell a little bit on deaf ears. A lot of people in the crowd were just like, "Yeah, it's not for me." Both keynotes were about that. So anyways, I think this year it's going to be better because of that, because everybody's bought in. I think it's right now because yeah, it's cloud. You can ship easier, faster. You can ship better. You can iterate better. You can get a product ready much, much quicker than if you're on-prem, and I think that's why you're seeing this blow up. I also think they're great ideas. Big fan of Atlas specifically. Big, big fan of Atlas.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. Fantastic. So, how are your customers seeing the migration to cloud? On the larger end, is that something that they're open to? Is that something that they support?

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Everybody is intrigued, I'll start there. Everybody's intrigued. Now, the level of interest depends on the industry and the size. When you have a massive... I'll use banks because to me, banks are kind of like countries. So if you look at a massive bank where you have 30, 40,000 users, usually they have solid infrastructures. They have solid administrators. They have teams that are kind of living off this. It's built its own economy, basically. It runs itself. When you go in there and you try to teach them about cloud and all the great things it'll do, they start asking questions that are very technical and they're very good. There's not really an answer in cloud for yet, and so it gets skittish. Whereas if I go to a 500,000 people organization and they start asking questions about cloud, and usually we have more answers for that. It's just easy, an easier conversation. They don't have the same worries or the same thing troubles on their mind than the admin of 40,000 people. It's just not the same reality that they're seeing.

So I think for now, and I know Atlassian's making a big push into that enterprise space, I think for now you're going to see that growth. But as long as we don't have full autonomy of where our data is and how accessible that data is, it's going to be a problem, as long as FedRAMP isn't available to all, as long as all these different SOCs and compliances aren't available to all. These are very difficult because you've built an ecosystem around a lot of integrations and Easy Agile being to me, one of those integrations because their third-party app, however you want to look at it. Adaptavist has their own third-party app. So you have script runner and all that. We all have third-party apps. So Atlassian can't be like, "Oh, yeah, I'll make a blanket statement. We can do all these things." It's not really true. I'm like, "Hold up, you got to take into account all these different app partners out there that are doing their things and you can't put us all into one roof."I think they're victims of their success. What still making Atlassian great is the partner ecosystem, apps, solutions, sorry, everything, but it's also what's causing the adoption and the speed to which adoption of cloud is happening. It's making it slower than they would want to. I think that was maybe the misstep a little bit when everything got announced was like, "Oh, you guys do rely on these apps a lot." Yeah. A lot of our customers actually would say that the apps are even more important to them than the core. It's just a thing that you're seeing. So to go back to your question, depends on the complexity of the instance. The bigger the instance, usually the more complex it is. So if I go to over 10,000 users, it's going to be a very long conversation. Very, very long conversation.

Dave Elkan:

Yes, it is. It's funny that Atlassian did ship this and say, "Hey." Well, actually, there was a presumption that the apps were covered by SOC 2 or the like as well, and that was a missing... But it was this misunderstanding. But I say as a business owner going through SOC 2, it's a very rewarding and good process to go through. It's hard. We are doing it far earlier than Atlassian did in their own journey, but the sooner you do it, the easier it is. Ideally that as a smaller company, you have less things to worry about and the processes you put in place will be easier to maintain and monitor. So we're excited to really go down the SOC 2 path and to provide that peace of mind to our enterprise customers. So yeah, very good process to go through.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah, you guys are going through it right now. Have you acquired it yet? Did you get your compliance yet or you're on your way to getting that?

Dave Elkan:

No, we're on the way to SOC 2 type 1 at the moment.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Wow. Nice.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah. Yeah. We got security group now in and they're handling all that. I'm not good with the compliances. I'll say it right now, right off the bat, I don't know them very well. I know they're like letters I would like to see next to every apps. That's what I know. I don't know how in depth the processes, but I know it's very involved to the point where you need to have a team dedicated to making that happen. So what have you guys seen so far? It's coming along great. What are some of the challenges that you've seen maybe? I'm just intrigued.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. Oh, look, so our cloud apps are all architected in the same way, so they all use the same code base to an extent, like the deployment methodology. We haven't done any acquisitions which have bolted on to make that more complicated, so we're making the most of that situation. We've done a fair bit of work over the last quarter or so to put in all the checks and the controls around that deployment. The next thing is to really put in place the processes to ensure that our team understands how to deal with different situations and the like. So, that's something we're going to tackle in the next quarter. I'm excited to go through that and do a bit of a sprint with Nick, my co-founder and co-CEO, to really see how much we can get done in a period of time and really focus on that. I think that the benefit will be that we have a much more understood and clear way of running our business, which is obvious to our customers as well, which is a very good thing. I'm all in favor of it. Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I think we're seeing some of the similar things, but we did acquire a bunch of stuff and so that is making everything a bit more difficult, for sure.

Dave Elkan:

I can understand. That would be very tricky to try and bridge those gaps and to homogenize enough to be able to have a really clear statement going forward. Yeah. Okay. So we touched quickly on the Atlassian apps that they're bringing. Are there any apps in the marketplace that you have got an eye on that you'd love to go and talk to, of course, Easy Agile aside?

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

I mean, of course. Yeah. A big need that I'm noticing now in the market... I don't know if it's a secret or something, I should wait because I know Team '23, they're going to be doing some stuff and I'm really excited for them. So one of the things that we're noticing is... So backups, so enterprise support, basically. Right now, when you're on the cloud, most companies, again, in the 40,000 and plus have strong backup needs and they actually have requirements, laws, things that they need to abide by as far as how long they maintain data, how long they have backups of data and all that. Right now, the way that it's done in cloud isn't nice at all. You actually have to go into the UI. You get a backup. If your backup is large, it's going to take multiple days to process and you got to remember to... It's all manual. There's nothing that really automated.

So, there is a growing market for these kinds of apps. I've been talking all that to these people at Revyz, R-E-V-Y-Z. What they do is they basically automate that process for you and they host your data. Right now, they only do it for a year, but it's still much better than what we're seeing out there. There's a lot of need for services like that, where they... Because I mean, part of the appeal of cloud is obviously hands off, don't have to worry about things anymore and Atlassian only guarantees backups for 21 days. So if you're an enterprise and you're looking for six months at least of data recovery, at least you're not going to get that. So by having a partner like Revyz or all these, there are other apps out there, I'm talking about Revyz specifically because I talk to them a bunch, but a lot of interesting things are happening.

Also, what's amazing about these apps, what these developers have found, and once they've have that process, they now get access to the structure of the data and they've started building tools around that structure. So for instance, that app can actually restore projects and issues and custom fields and configurations. So you don't need to do a full restore. You can actually pick what you want to restore, which is brilliant. It's something that even in data center wasn't easy to do. You couldn't just say like, "Hey, give me that issue." You'd have to restore the snapshot, go into the system, find your stuff. Now being able to go into my UI and Jira, go into my backup app, go and look the issued I deleted by mistake, find it, restore it the same day, it has comments saying, "This was restored by revisits, so make sure blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada." It's just brilliant and I'm really excited to see that grow this year.

Dave Elkan:

That's amazing. Yeah, it's a really intriguing part of this piece that I've never really thought through that that's actually a really important part of running an enterprise, that you have those continuous backups. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, that's a great insight.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah, it's going to be an interesting market to dive into because we've been asked, even as a service partner, "Can you deliver on this?" The truth is without an app, you can't. There's no real way for me to get a backup. I'd have to go into your instance every day. I don't think you want a consultant going into every day your instance, downloading a backup and throwing it. I'd rather spend my money elsewhere. So these apps are going to be very... I think they're going to be big and I'm really interested to see what happens with all these different ventures.

Dave Elkan:

Well, certainly, a booth I'll be popping by to see if we can include the Easy Agile data in that backup as well.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yes, exactly. So they are looking at other app partners and seeing what they can do. So I think, yeah, absolutely, if you want to have a chat, they're great people.

Dave Elkan:

Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time today, JP. That's a wrap. Hey, is there anything else you wanted to touch on before we wrap up? Is there anything you are hoping to get away from the event, to take away from the event? Anything on the sidelines you're going to see when you're there?

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

I mean, obviously, App Day is going to be a big thing. Really excited to meet y'all in person, see everybody. So App Day is the time where I get really technical, get my hands dirty. I don't do that a lot these days. I miss it sometimes just sitting down and doing some good old admin work. So anyway, the App Days are usually when I really get back to the nitty-gritty of let's talk about script runner, where we're at now, and let's meet with Easy Agile, with Temple, with all these different app vendors and talk about what's coming up and what they're seeing. So really looking forward to that. But other than that, no, just looking to have a good time. I'll hopefully get some good social time as well at the evening. Like I said, we won't get ourselves half the fun is also after the events every day, so really looking forward to that, for sure, and meeting all my fellow ecosystem partners and talking to everybody and seeing what they've seen in the past year.

Dave Elkan:

Likewise. I'm at least 1,000% more excited now having talked to you about it. So thank you so much for taking the time today, JP, to talk through that and I can't wait to see you there.

Jean-Philippe Comeau:

Yeah, I can't wait to see you. Thanks for having me.

Dave Elkan:

No probs. Thanks, mate.

"It was great chatting to Caitlin about the importance of the Team Retrospective in creating a high performing cross-functional team" - Chloe Hall

In this episode, I was joined by Caitlin Mackie - Content Marketing Coordinator at Easy Agile.

In this episode, we spoke about;

• Looking at the team retrospective as a tool for risk mitigation rather than just another agile ceremony
• The importance of doing the retrospective on a regular cycle
• Why you should celebrate the wins?
• Taking the action items from your team retrospective to your team sprint planning
• Timeboxing the retrospective
• Creating a psychologically safe environment for your team retrospective

I hope you enjoy today's episode as much as I did recording it.

Transcript

Chloe Hall:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. I'm Chloe, Marketing Coordinator at Easy Agile, and I'll be your host for today's episode. Before we begin, we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which I am recording today, the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal Speaking nation and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We extend that same respect to all Aboriginal and to Strait Islander peoples who are tuning in today. So today, we have a bit of a different episode for you. I'm going to be talking with Easy Agile's very own Content Marketing Coordinator, Caitlin Mackie. Caitlin is the Product Owner* of our Brand and Conversions Team*. Now this team is a cross-functional team who have only been together for roughly six months. And within their first few months, as a team, mind you they also had two brand new employees, they worked on a company rebrand.

Chloe Hall:

A new team, a huge task, the possibility of the team being high performing was unlikely at this point in time. So, the team was too new to have already formed that trust, strong relationships, and psychological safety, but somehow they came together and managed to work together, creating a flow of continuous improvement and ship this rebrand. So, I've brought for you today Caitlin onto the podcast to discuss the team's secret for success. Welcome to the podcast, Caitlin.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thanks, Chloe. It's a bit different sitting on this side. I'm used to being in your shoes. I feel [inaudible 00:01:45]. I feel uncomfortable. [inaudible 00:01:46].

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. It's my first time hosting as well, so very strange. Isn't it? How are you feeling today?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Good. I'm excited. I'm excited to chat about our experience coming together as a cross-functional Agile team, and hopefully share some of the things that worked for us with our listeners.

Chloe Hall:

Yes, I know myself, and I'm sure our audience is very excited to hear what your team's secret to success was. Did you want to start off by telling us what was this big secret that really helped you work together as a team?

Caitlin Mackie:

That's a great question, Chloe. And that's a big question. I'm not sure if there's one key thing, I suppose, it is that ultimate secret source or that one thing that led to the success. I'm sure we all want to hear what that is. I would also love to know if there's just this one key ingredient, but I think something for us, and probably one of the most memorable things that really worked for us, and there was a lot for us to benefit from doing this, was actually doing our retrospectives. So that's probably the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to what led to our success.

Chloe Hall:

Okay. Yeah. In the beginning, why did you start doing the retrospectives?

Caitlin Mackie:

So, we were a new forming team, like you mentioned before, and we seen retrospectives as another Agile ceremony, and we saw other teams doing it and they were having a lot of success from it, so we became to jump on that bandwagon. And I think with being a new forming team, there are so many things that come into play. So, you're trying to figure each other out, how we all like to work and communicate with each other, all of that. And we were the first ever team dedicated to owning and improving our website. And we also knew it was likely that we'd be responsible for designing and launching a rebrand.

Caitlin Mackie:

So when you try and stitch all of that together, and then consider all those elements, we knew that we needed to reserve some time to be able to quickly iterate and call out what works and what doesn't. And what we did understand is that retrospectives are a great opportunity for the whole team to get together and uncover any problematic issues and have an open discussion aimed at really identifying room for improvement, or calling out what's working well, so we can continue to do that. So, I think retros allowed us to understand where we can have the most impact and how to be a really effective cross-functional Agile team.

Chloe Hall:

Wow. That is already so insightful. Yeah, it sounds like the retrospectives really helped you to gain that momentum into finding who your team is, becoming a well-working, high-performing cross-functional team. So, how often were you doing the retro? Were you doing this on a regular cycle, or was it just, "Okay. We have a problem. Some blockers have come up, we need to do a retro"?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. I think initially retro, we kind of viewed retros as this thing where like, "Oh, we've done a few sprints now. We should probably do a retro and just reflect on how those few sprints went." It was kind of like this thing. It was always back of our mind. And we knew we needed to do it, but weren't really sure about the cadence and the way to go about it. So now, we do retros on a Friday morning, which is the last day of our weekly sprint. And then we jump into sprint planning after that. So after bio break as well, so let the team digest everything we talked about in retrospectives. And then we come into sprint planning with all the topics that we're discussed, and we will have a really nice, fresh perspective.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

So, I think this works really well for us because everything is happening in a timely manner. We've just had a discussion about the best things that happened in the sprint or what worked really well, so you want to make sure you can practice the same behavior in the following, and vice versa for the improvements that you want to make. So, that list of action items that come out of a retrospective provide a really nice contact, context, sorry. And you have them all in mind during sprint planning.

Caitlin Mackie:

So for example, in the previous sprint, it might have come up that you underestimated your story points or there wasn't enough detail on your user stories. So, with each story or task that you are bringing into the sprint, you're then asking the question, is everyone happy with the level of detail? What are we missing? Or we've only story pointed this or two, is it more likely to be a five? So, everything is really fresh in your mind, and I definitely think that helps create momentum. When you've got the whole team working to figure out how you can be more effective with every sprint.

Chloe Hall:

That's such a great point that you just made Caitlin. And I love how going from doing the team retrospective, that you actually can take those action items and go into your sprint and put them into place straight away. It's really good. Otherwise, I feel like if you do the sprint retrospective on the Friday, and you're like, "Okay, these are our action items," get to Monday sprint planning and you're just thinking of the weekend. That [inaudible 00:07:20]

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. They're super fresher mind for everyone. So, it might not work for every team, but we find it works really well for us, because we're being really deliberate with how we approach sprint planning.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. And then with that, I could see how doing the retro, how it could easily go over time, but then your team has sprint planning scheduled after. So, it's like you can't go over time. How have you managed to kind of time box that retrospective?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, that's a really, really good question. And it is on purpose as well that they are scheduled closely together. Som as mentioned above, the discussion you've had in the retrospectives provides a nice momentum going to the sprint planning, but it does mean we have to watch the clock. And initially, this can be quite awkward, because you want to make sure that everyone feels heard and that everybody has the same opportunity to contribute. And I think this responsibility falls on the scrum master, or the product owner, or whoever's facilitating the retrospective to call it out and make sure everyone has the chance to be heard. You'll naturally have people tell the longer story or add a lot of extra context before getting to the point. And then you'll have others that will be a lot more direct. And I'm a lot like the latter. I struggle to get to the point, which doesn't work well when you're trying to time box a retrospective, right?

Chloe Hall:

And I can relate, same personality.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yes. So with this, I think it really comes down to communicating the expectation and the priority from the get go. With our team and with any team, you will want to figure out who you can perform really well and continually improve to exceed expectations and be better and learn and grow together. And I think if you all share that same mindset going into the retrospective and acknowledging that it's a safe

space to have difficult conversations. And as long as you're communicating with empathy, the team knows that it's never anything personal, and it's all in the best interest of the team. And that then helps the less direct communicators, like myself, address their point more concisely and really forces them to be more deliberate and succinct with their communication style.

Caitlin Mackie:

And that's really key to being able to stick to that time box, I think. And it does take practice, because it comes down to creating that psychological safety in your team. But once that's there, it's so much easier to call out when someone's going down a windy track, and bring the focus back and sort of say, "I hear you, what's the action item?" And just become a lot more deliberate.

Chloe Hall:

Wow. I couldn't even imagine like how hard it would be, with the personalities that yourself and I have, just trying to be so direct and get rid of all the fluffy stuff. I mean, look at what it's done to form such an amazing team that we have. So, you mentioned that aspect of psychological safety before. And how do you think being in a new cross-functional team... Only six months together, you had those new employees, do you think you were able to create a psychological safety space at any point?

Caitlin Mackie:

That's another fantastic question. And I feel like, honestly, it would be best to have a team discussion around this. It'd be interesting to hear everybody's perspectives around what contributes to that element of psychological safety and if everybody feels the same. So, I can't speak for the team, but my personal opinion on this or personal experience is that creating an environment of psychological safety really comes down to a mutual trust and respect. And at the end of the day, we all share the same goal. So, we all really, really respect what each other brings to the table and understand how all of these moving parts that we are working on individually all come together to achieve the goal. So, when we're having these open discussions in retros, or not even in retros, just communicating in general really, it's clear that we're asking questions in the best interest of the team and individual motives never come into play, or people aren't just offering their opinion when it's unwarranted or providing feedback, or being overly critical when they weren't asked to do so.

Caitlin Mackie:

So, none of those toxic behaviors happen, because we all respect that whatever piece of work is in question or the topic of discussion, the person owning that work, at the end of the day, is the expert. And we trust them, and we don't doubt each other for a second. And I think the other half of that is that we're also really lucky that if something doesn't go as we planned, we're all there to pick each other up and go again. So, this ties quite nicely into actually one of our values at Easy Agile is commit as a team. And this is all about acknowledging that we grow and succeed when we do it together, and to look after one another and engage with authenticity and courage. Som I may be biased, but I wholeheartedly believe that our team completely embraces that. And there's just such an admiration for what we all bring to the table, and I think that's really key to creating the psychological safety.

Chloe Hall:

I love that your team is really embracing our value, commit as a team and putting it into place, because that's what we're all about at Easy Agile, and it's just so great to see it as well. I think the other thing that

I wanted to address was... So again, during this cross functional team, and you've got design and dev, how do you think retros assisted you in allowing to work out what design and dev needed from each other?

Caitlin Mackie:

For sure. So, for some extra context for our listeners as well, so in our team, we've got two developers, Haley and David, and a designer, Matt and myself, who's in the marketing. So, we're very much a cross-functional little mini team. So, we all have the same goal and that same focus, but we also are all working on these little individual components that we then stitch together. So,, I think... We doing retros regularly. What we were able to identify was a really effective design and development cycle. So, we figured out a rhythm for what one another needed at certain points. For example, something we discovered really early was making sure that we didn't bring design and dev work into the same sprint. We needed to have a completely finished design file before dev starts working on it. And that might sound really obvious, but initially we thought, "Oh, well, if you have a half finished design file, dev can start working on that. And by the time that's done, the rest of the design file will be done."

Caitlin Mackie:

But what we failed to acknowledge is that by doing that, we weren't leaving enough capacity to iterate or address any issues or incorporate feedback on the first part of that design file, or if dev started working on it and design then gets told, "Oh, this part right here, it's not possible," so the designer is back working on the first part. And it just creates a lot of these roadblocks. So in retros, this came up and we were able to raise it and understand that what design needed from dev and what dev needed from design in order to make sure we weren't blockers for each other. And the action item out of the retro is that we all agreed that a design file had to be completely finished before dev picks up the work.

Chloe Hall:

I think it's so great that you were able to identify these blockers early on. Do you think like doing the retro on a weekly reoccurring basis was able to bring up those blockers quickly, or do you think it wouldn't have made a difference?

Caitlin Mackie:

No, definitely. I, a hundred percent, think that retros allowed us to address the blockers in a way more timely and effective manner. And we kind of touched on that before, but yeah, retros let you address the blockers, unpack them, understand why they're happening and what we need to do to make sure they don't happen again. So, for sure.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. Yeah. I guess I want to talk a little bit now about the wins, the very exciting part of the retro, the part that we all love. So, how important do you think the wins are within the retro?

Caitlin Mackie:

So important. So, so, so important. It's like, when you achieve something epic as a team, you have to call it out. Celebrate all the wins, big, small. Some weeks will be better than others, but embrace that glass half full mentality. And there's always something to be proud of and celebrate, so call it out amongst

each other, share it with the whole company, publicly recognize it. Yeah, I think it's so important to embrace the wins. It just sort of creates a really positive atmosphere when you're in the team, makes everybody feel heard and recognized for their really positive contribution that they're making. And I think a big thing here as well is that if you've achieved something epic as a team, it's helpful for other teams to hear that as well, right? You figured out a cool new way to do something, share it. If it helped you as a team, it's most likely going to help another team.

Caitlin Mackie:

So I think celebrating the wins isn't even just reserved for work stuff either, right? If somebody's doing something amazing outside of work or hit a personal goal, get behind it.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

To celebrate all the wins always.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. And I think it's so good how you mentioned that it's vital to celebrate the wins of someone's personal life as well, because at the end of the day, we're all human beings. Yes,, we come to work, but we do have that personal element. And knowing what someone's like outside of work as well is an element to creating that psychological safe space and team bonding, which is so vital to having a good team at the end of the day. Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, you hit the nail in the head with that. We talked about psychological safety before, and I definitely think incorporating that, acknowledging that, yeah, we are ourselves at work, but we also have a whole other life outside of that too, so just being mindful of that and just cheering each other on all the time. That's what we got to do, be each other's biggest cheerleaders.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah, exactly. That's the real key to success. Isn't it?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, that's it. That's the key.

Chloe Hall:

So, you've been working really well as a new cross functional, high performing Agile team. How do you think... What is your future process for retros?

Caitlin Mackie:

We will for sure continue to do them weekly. It's part of the Agile manifesto, but we want to focus on responding to change, and I think retros really allow us to do that. It's beneficial and really valuable for

the team. And when you can set the team up for success, you're going to see that positive impact that has across the organization as a whole. So yeah, we've found a nice cadence and a rhythm that works for us. So, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

Is that what they say? Is that the saying?

Chloe Hall:

I don't know. I think so, but let's just go with it. [inaudible 00:19:02], don't fix it.

Caitlin Mackie:

There we go. Yeah.

Chloe Hall:

You can quote Caitlin Mackie on that one.

Caitlin Mackie:

Quote me on that.

Chloe Hall:

Okay, Caitlin. Well, there's just one final thing that I want to address today. I thought end of the podcast, let's just have a little bit of fun, and we're going to do a little snippet of Caitlin's hot tip. So, for the audience listening, I want you to think of something that they can take away from this episode, an action item that they can start doing within their teams today. Take it away.

Caitlin Mackie:

Okay. Okay. All right. I would say always have the retrospective. Don't skip it. Even if there's minimal items to discuss, new things will always come up. And you have to regularly provide ways for the team to share their thoughts. And I'll leave you with, always promote positive dialogue and show value and appreciation for team ideas and each other. That's my-

Chloe Hall:

I love that.

Caitlin Mackie:

That's my hot tip.

Chloe Hall:

Thanks, Caitlin. Thanks for sharing. I really like how you said always promote positive dialogue. I think that is so great. Yeah. Well, thanks, Caitlin. Thanks for jumping on the podcast today and-

Caitlin Mackie:

Thanks, Chloe.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. Sharing your team's experience with retrospectives and new cross functional team. It's been really nice hearing from you, and there's so much that our audience can take away from what you've shared with us today. And I hope that we've truly inspired everybody listening to get out there and implement the team retrospective on a regular basis. So, yeah, thank you.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thank you so much, Chloe. Thanks for having me. It was fun, fun to be on this side. And I hope everyone enjoys this episode.

Chloe Hall:

Thanks, Caitlin.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thanks. Bye.