Easy Agile Podcast Ep.29 From Hierarchy to Empowerment: Agile Leadership Paradigms

"I really enjoyed speaking with Melissa Reeve, VP of Marketing at Scaled Agile about how non-software teams are adopting a new way of working."

It's more important than ever to be customer-focused.

We talk about the danger of 'walk-up-work' and how to avoid this through proper sprint planning.

Melissa also gives an update on how agile is spreading to non-technical teams.

‍

‍

‍

Transcript

Sean Blake:

Hello everyone. And welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. We have a really interesting guest with us today. It's Melissa Reeve, the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile. We're really excited to have her on today. Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile, Inc. In this role Melissa guides the marketing team, helping people better understand Scaled Agile, the Scaled Agile Framework. In other words, SAFe and its mission. She also serves as the practice lead for integrating SAFe practices into marketing environments. Melissa received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and she currently resides in Boulder, Colorado with her husband, chickens, and dogs. Melissa, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Melissa Reeve:

It's such a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate it.

Sean Blake:

Great. That's great. I really like your enthusiasm straight off the bat. So what I'm really interested in hearing about, Melissa is a little bit about how you got to where you are today. What have been the highlights of your career so far and how as a marketer, did you find yourself in the Agile space?

Melissa Reeve:

Well, thanks for asking. And I have to tell you, but just before the podcast my husband knocked on the door and he was all proud because we just got a new set of chickens and one of the chickens had laid its first egg. So that's been the highlight of my day so far, not necessarily the highlight of my career.

Sean Blake:

So you'll be having scrambled eggs and eggs on toast probably for the next few weeks now.

Melissa Reeve:

I think so. So back to the career, I really fell into marketing. My background was in Japanese literature and language. And I had anticipated this great career and international business in Asia. And then I moved out to the Navajo Indian Reservation and just pivoted. Found my way into marketing and found my way into Agile right around 2013 when I discovered that there was an Agile marketing manifesto. And that really was a changing point in terms of how I thought about marketing. Because up until that point, it really considered marketing in what's termed waterfall. Of course, marketers generally don't use the term waterfall.

Melissa Reeve:

But then I started to think about marketing in a different way. And when I came across Scaled Agile, it brought together so many elements of my career. The lean thinking that I'd studied when I studied in Japan and the lean manufacturing, it was Agile marketing that I'd discovered in 2013 and just education and technology have always been part of my career. So I really consider myself fortunate to have found Scaled Agile and found myself in the midst of scaling Agile into both enterprises, as well as marketing parts of the enterprise.

Sean Blake:

Oh wow, okay. And I noticed from your LinkedIn profile, you worked at some universities and colleges in the past. And I assume some of the teams, the marketing teams you've worked in, in the past have been quite large. What were some of those structures that you used to work in, in those marketing teams? And what were some of the challenges you faced?

Melissa Reeve:

Yes, well, the largest company was Motorola. And that was pretty early on in my career. So I don't think I can recall exactly what that team structure is. But I think in terms of the impediments with marketing, approvals has always been an issue. No matter if you're talking about a smaller organization or a larger organization, it seems like things have to go up the chain, get signed off, and then they come back down for execution. And inherent in that are delays and wait states and basically waste in the system.

Sean Blake:

Right. So, what is Agile marketing then and how does it seek to try and solve some of those problems?

Melissa Reeve:

Well, I'm glad you asked because there's a lot of confusion in the market around Agile marketing. And I can't tell you how many news articles I've read that say marketing should be Agile. And they're really talking about lowercase Agile, meaning marketing should be more nimble or be more responsive. But they're not really talking about capital-A Agile marketing, which is a way of working that has principles and practices behind it. And so that's one aspect where there's confusion around Agile marketing.

Melissa Reeve:

And then another aspect is really how big of a circle you're talking about. In the software side when someone mentions Agile, they're really talking about a smaller team and depending on who you talk to, it could be anywhere from five to 11 people in that Agile team. And you're talking about a series of teams of that size. So when you're talking about Agile marketing, you could be talking about an individual team.

Melissa Reeve:

But some people, when they're talking about Agile marketing, they're talking about a transformation and transforming that entire marketing organization into an Agile way of working. And of course, in the SAFe world, we're really talking about those marketing teams that might be adjacent to a SAFe implementation. So, I think it's a good question to ask and a good question to ask up front when you're having a conversation about Agile marketing.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay. And for those people that don't know much about SAFe, can you just explain, what's the difference between just having a marketing team now working in a capital-A Agile way, and what's the difference between an organization that is starting to adopt Scaled Agile? What's the difference-

Melissa Reeve:

Sure.

Sean Blake:

...between those?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. So what software organizations found is that Agile teams, so those groups of five to 11 people, that way of working works really well when you have a limited number of software developers when you started to get into the world's largest organizations. So I think of anybody on the Global 2000, they might have tens of thousands of software developers in their organization. And in order to leverage the benefits of Agile, you needed to have cadence and synchronization, not only within a team, but across multiple teams up into the program level and even the portfolio level.

Melissa Reeve:

And the same holds true with large marketing organizations. Imagine you're a CMO and you have 6,000 marketers underneath you. How are you supposed to get alignment to your vision, to your strategies that you're setting if you don't have a way of connecting strategy to execution. And so the Scaled Agile Framework is a way of taking those Agile practices across multiple teams and up into the highest levels of the organization so that we're all moving in a similar direction.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay, I think that makes sense. And from a software team's point of view, one of the benefits of Agile is that it helps teams become more customer focused. And many would argue, well, marketing has always been customer focused. But have you found in your experience that maybe that's not so true? And when marketing teams start to adopt Agile, they realize what it really means to become customer focused.

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. I mean, you raised another great point because I think most marketers think that they're customer focused. Like many things in the world, the world is a relative place. So you can, in your mind, in theory, be thinking about the customer or you can be actually talking to the customer. So I just finished what I call the listening session. And it was during our hackathon, which is our version of an innovation, couple of days worth of innovation. So it was eight hours on a Zoom call with somebody South Africa. Just listening to her experience and listening to her go through one of our courses, slide by slide, by slide, explaining what her experience was at each step of the way.

Melissa Reeve:

So if you think about somebody who is sitting in a large enterprise, maybe has never met the customer, only knows the customer in theory, on one end of the spectrum. And you think about this listening session on the other end of the spectrum, you start to get an understanding of what we're talking about. Now, your question really pointed to the fact that in Agile practices, you're thinking about the customer every time. In theory, every time you write a story. So when you write a story, you write the story from the perspective of the customer. And I would just encourage all the marketers out there to know the customer personally. And I know that's not easy in these large organizations. It's sometimes hard to get face time with the customer, but if you aren't speaking directly to a customer, chances are you don't actually know the customer.

Melissa Reeve:

So find a way, talk to the sales folks, get on the phone with some of your customer service representatives. Go to a trade show, find a way to talk directly to the customer because you're going to uncover some nuances that'll pay dividends in your ability to satisfy the customer. And when you go to write that story again, it will be even more rich.

Sean Blake:

Oh, that's really good advice, Melissa. I remember from personal experience, some of these large companies that I've worked in, we would say, "Oh, this is what the customer wants." But we actually didn't know any customers by name. Some of us personally were customers, but it's not really the same thing as going out and listening to people and what did they find challenging about using that app or what do they actually want out of this product? So there's a huge difference, isn't there, between guessing what a customer might want or should want? And then what their day to day actually looks like, and what are the things that they struggle with? That's hugely important.

Sean Blake:

For someone who's in one of these big companies, they're in a marketing team, perhaps they don't have the power or the influence to say, "Okay, now we're going to do Agile marketing." What would your advice be for someone like that, who can see the upside of moving their teams in that direction, but they don't necessarily know where to start?

Melissa Reeve:

Well, there's a philosophy out there that says take what you can get. So if you are just one person who is advocating for Agile marketing, maybe that's what you can do is you can advocate. Maybe you can start building alliances within the organization, chatting casually to your coworkers, finding out if you have allies in other parts of the organization and start to build a groundswell type movement.

Melissa Reeve:

Maybe you can build your own personal Kanban board and start tracking your work through your own Kanban board. And through visualizing your work in that way, it's a little bit harder now that we're all remote, but should we get back into offices somebody could in theory, walk by your cubicle, see your Kanban board and ask about it. And now you might have two people using a Kanban board, three people. And really start to set the example through your mindset, through your behaviors, through your conversations in order to start getting some support.

Sean Blake:

Oh, that's really good. So be the change that you want to see in the organization.

Melissa Reeve:

Exactly.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay, that's really good. And when these companies are moving towards this way of working, and then they're looking to take the next level, let's say it starts in the software development teams and then say marketing is the next team to come on board. How does it then spread throughout the whole organization? Because I know from personal experience, if there's still that part of the organization that's working anti-Agile it actually still makes it really difficult for the Agile teams to get anything done. Because there's still the blockers and the processes and the approvals that you need to go through with those other teams. And I guess SAFe is the answer, right? But how do you start to scale up Agile throughout the whole organization?

Melissa Reeve:

Sure. And what you're talking about is really business agility, is taking the whole business and making the business Agile. And you pointed out something that's key to that, which is once you solve the bottleneck and the impediments in one area of the business, then it'll shift to another area of the business. So the advantage of business agility is that you're trying to keep those bottlenecks from forming or shifting. But what a bottleneck essentially does is it creates what we call a burning platform. So it creates a need for change. And that's actually what we're seeing in the marketing side is we've got these IT organizations, they're operating much more efficiently with the use of Agile and with the use of SAFe. And what's happening is the software teams are able to release things more quickly than the teams that are surrounding them, one of which could be marketing.

Melissa Reeve:

And so now marketing is incentivized to look at ways of changing. They're incentivized to take a look and say, "Well, maybe Agile is the answer for us." So let's just say that marketing jumps on board and all of a sudden they're cranking along, and except for that everything's getting stuck in legal. And so now legal has a case for change and the pressures on legal to adopt it. So there is a way to let it spread organically. Most transformation coaches will understand this phenomenon and probably encourage the organization to just go Agile all in, obviously not in a big bang kind of way, but gradually move in that direction so that we're not just constantly shifting bottlenecks.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay, that makes sense. And when these companies are trying to build business agility across the different functions, are there some mistakes that you see say pop up over and over again? And how can we avoid those when we are on this journey of business agility?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. So I feel like the most common mistake, at least the one that I see the most often in marketing, although I've seen it in software as well, is people thinking that the transformation is about processes or tools. So for example, in marketing, they might adopt a tool to "become more Agile." Maybe it's a Kanban visualization tool, or maybe they're being suggested to adopt another common ALM type tool. And so they adopt this tool and they learn how to use it, and they wonder why they're not seeing big improvements.

Melissa Reeve:

And it's because Agile at its heart is a human transformation. So we're really taking a look at in trying to change the way people think. One of the topics I speak on is the history of management theory. And while it sounds pretty dry, in reality, it's eye opening. Because you realize that a lot of the habits that we have today are rooted back in the 20th and 19th centuries. So they're rooted in assembly lines. They're rooted in French management theory, which advocated command and control.

Melissa Reeve:

They're rooted in classism. There was a management class and a laboring, and the management class knew the one best way of doing things. So more than a process, more than a tool, we're talking about transforming this legacy of management thinking into a way that's appropriate for today's workers. And I feel like that's the number one mistake that I see organizations making as they're moving into transforming to Agile, an Agile way of working.

Sean Blake:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Yeah, that's really interesting. And it really is eye opening, is it? When you look at how the nine to five workday came about, because that's the time when the factories were open and all the history around how organizations are structured. And it's really important, I think, to challenge some of those things that we've done in the past that worked back in the industrial age. But now we're moving into the information age and into these times of digital transformation. It probably doesn't work for us anymore, does it, some of those things? Or do you think some of those things are still valuable now that we have distributed teams, a lot of people are working remotely? Are there any things that come to mind that you think actually we shouldn't get rid of that just yet?

Melissa Reeve:

Oh, I'm sure there are. John Kotter has presented in his book, Accelerate, this notion of a dual operating system. So that you have the network part of the organization, which moves fast and nimble like a startup and then you have the hierarchical part of the organization. And the hierarchy is very, very good at scaling things. It's a well oiled machine. You do need somebody to approve your expense report. You do need some policies and some guidelines, some guard rails. And so we're not actually saying abolish the hierarchy. And I do feel like that's part of this legacy system. But what we are saying is abolish some of the command and control, this notion that the management knows the one best way, because the knowledge worker oftentimes knows more than his or her manager.

Melissa Reeve:

It's just too hard for a manager to keep up with everything that is in the heads of the people who report to him or her. So that's a really big change and it was a change for me. And I think why I got so fascinated in this history of management theory is because I came across some notes from my college days. And I realized that I had been taught these historic management theories. I'd been taught Taylorism, which stems from 1911. And I realized, wow, there's a lot of undoing that I've had to do in order to adopt this Agile way of working.

Sean Blake:

Well, that's great. Yeah, that's really important, isn't it? I've heard you speak before about this concept of walk-up work, especially in the realm of marketing. But I suppose, well, firstly, I'd like to know what is walk-up work. Why is it so dangerous, not just for marketers, but for all teams? And how do we start to fight back against walk-up work?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. So, marketers in particular get bombarded with what I like to call walk-up work. And that's when an executive or even a peer literally walks up, so think again about the cubicle farm, and makes a request. So how that looks in the virtual world is the slack or the instant message, "Hey, would you mind?" One is that it results in a lot of context switching and there's time lost in that context switching. And then the other part is rarely do these requests come in well-defined or even with any sort of deadline detach. In marketing, it might look like, "Hey, can you create this graphic for this email I'm sending out?" So now you've left your poor graphic designer with this knowledge that here she has to make a graphic, but they don't really have any of the specs.

Melissa Reeve:

So it's very, very helpful to put these things into stories, to follow the Agile process, where you're taking that walk-up work to the product owner, where the product owner can work with you to define that story, keep the person who's doing the work on task, not making them context switch or do that. Get that story in that acceptance criteria very well defined and prioritized before that work then comes into the queue for the graphic designer. And this is an anti-pattern, whether you're talking about an organization of 50 or 5,000.

Melissa Reeve:

And what I've found is the hardest behavior to change is that of the executives. Because not only do they have walk-up work, but they have positional authority too. And it's implied that, that person will stop working on whatever they're working on and immediately jump to the walk-up work being defined by the executive. So I feel like it's really dangerous to the whole Agile ecosystem because it's context switching, it interrupts flow and introduces waste into the system. And your highest priority items might not being worked on.

Sean Blake:

Okay. So how many people do you have on your marketing team at Scaled Agile?

Melissa Reeve:

We're pretty small, still. We've got about somewhere in the 20s, 23, 25, give or take or few.

Sean Blake:

So how do you-

Melissa Reeve:

I think right now we're three Agile teams.

Sean Blake:

Three. Okay. So those 20 something is split into three Agile teams. And do they each have a product owner or how does the prioritization of marketing work in your teams?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah, it's a good question. So we do have individual product owners for those three product teams. And what's fascinating is the product owners then also have to meet very regularly to make sure that the priorities stay aligned. Because like many marketing teams, we don't have specialized skill sets on each of those teams. So for the group of 23, we only have one copywriter. For the group of 23, we have two graphic designers. So it's not like each team has its own graphic designer or its own copywriter.

Sean Blake:

Yes.

Melissa Reeve:

So that means the three POs have to get together and decide the priorities, the joint priorities for the copywriter, the joint priorities for those graphic designers. And I think it's working. I mean, it's not without its hiccups, but I think it's the role of the PO and it's an important role.

Sean Blake:

So how do you avoid the temptation to come to these teams and say, "Drop what you're doing, there's something new that we all need to work on?" Do you find that challenging as an executive yourself to really let the teams be autonomous and self-organizing?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah, I think the biggest favor we've done to the teams is really, I don't want to say banned walk-up work, but the first thing we did is we defined it. And we said, "Walk-up work is anything that's going to take you more than two hours and that was not part of iteration planning." And iteration is only two weeks. And so, in theory, you've done it within the past 10 days. So if it wasn't part of that and you can't push it off to the next iteration planning, and there's a sense of urgency, then it's walk-up work.

Melissa Reeve:

And we've got the teams to a point where they are in the habit of then calling in the PO and saying, "Hey, would you mind going talking to so and so, and getting this defined and helping me understand where this fits in the priority order." And really that was the biggest hurdle because as marketers, I think a lot of us want to say yes if somebody approaches us with work. But what's happened is people have, myself included, stopped approaching the copywriters, stopped approaching the graphic designer with work. I just know, go to the PO.

Sean Blake:

That's good. So it's an extra line of defense for the team so they can continue to focus on their priorities and what they were already working on without being distracted by these new ideas and new priorities.

Melissa Reeve:

Yes. And in fact, I think we, in this last PI reduced walk-up work from 23% down to 11%. So we're not a 100%. And I don't know if we'll ever get to be a 100%, but we're certainly seeing progress in that direction.

Sean Blake:

Oh, that's really good. Really good. And so your marketing teams are working in an Agile way. Do you feel that across the board, not only within your organization, but also just more generally, are you seeing that Agile is being adopted by non-technical teams, so marketing, legal, finance? Are these sort of non-technical teams adopting Agile at a faster rate, or do you feel like it's still going to take some years to get the message out there?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. And I guess my question to you would be, a faster rate than what?

Sean Blake:

Good question. I suppose what I'm asking is, do you feel like this is a trend that non-technical teams are adopting Agile or is it something that really is in its infancy and hasn't really caught on yet, especially amongst Scaled Agile customers or people that you're connected to in the Agile industry?

Melissa Reeve:

I would say yes. Yes, it's a trend. And yes, people are doing it. And yes, it's in its infancy.

Sean Blake:

So, yes?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. So all of those combined, and I'm not going to kid you, I mean, this is new stuff. In fact, as part of that listening session I mentioned and we were talking about all these different parts of the business. And there was mentioned that the Scaled Agile Framework is the guidance to these teams, to HR, to legal, to marketing could be more robust. And the answer is absolutely. And the reason is because we're still learning ourselves. This is brand new territory that we're cutting our teeth on. My guess is that it'll take us several years, I don't know how many several is, to start learning, figuring out how this looks and really implementing it.

Melissa Reeve:

Now, my hope is that we'll get to a point where Agile is across the organization, that it's been adapted to the different environments. When I've seen it and when I've thought through things like Agile HR, Agile Legal, Agile procurement, the underpinnings seem to be solid. We can even things like the continuous delivery pipeline of DevOps. When I think about marketing and I think about automation. And I think about artificial intelligence, yeah, I can see that in marketing and I can see the need for this to unfold, but will it take us a while to figure out that nuance? Absolutely.

Sean Blake:

Okay. And can you see any other trends more broadly happening in the Agile space? You know, if we're to look forward, say 10 years, a decade into the future, what does the way of working look like? Are we all still remote or how are team's going to approach digital transformations in 10 years time? What's your perspective on the future?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah, I mean, sometimes to look to the future I like to look to the past. And in this case I might look 10 or 12 years to the past. And 12 years ago, I was getting my very first iPhone. I remember that it was 2007, 2008. And you think about what a seismic shift that was in terms of our behavior and social media and connecting and having this computer in our hand. So I ask myself, what seismic shift lies ahead? And certainly COVID has been an accelerant to some of these shifts. I ask myself, will I be on airplanes as frequently as I was in the past? Or have we all become so accustomed to Zoom meetings that we realized there's power there. And we don't necessarily need to get on an airplane to get the value.

Melissa Reeve:

Now, as it pertains to Agile, I feel like in 10 years we won't be calling it Agile. I feel like it will look something more like a continuous learning organization or responsive organization. Agile refers to a very specific set of practices. And as that new mindset, well, the practices and the principles and the mindset, and as that new mindset takes hold and becomes the norm, then will we be calling it Agile? Or will it just be the way that people are working? My guess is it'll start to be moving toward the latter.

Sean Blake:

Well, let's hope that it becomes the normal, right? I mean that it would be great to have more transparency, more cross functional work, less walk-up work and more business agility across the board, wouldn't it? I think it would be great if that becomes the new normal.

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah, me too. Yeah. And I think, we don't call the way we manage people. We don't say, "Oh, that's Taylorism. Are you going to be practicing Taylorism? It's just the way we've either learned through school or learned from our bosses how to manage people. And that's my hope for Agile, is that we won't be calling it this thing. It's just the way we do things around here.

Sean Blake:

Great. Well, Melissa, I think we'll leave it there. I really enjoyed our conversation, especially as a marketer myself. It's great to hear your insight into the industry. And everything we've discussed today has been really, really eyeopening for me. So thank you so much for sharing that with me and with our audience. And we hope to have you on the podcast again, in the future.

Melissa Reeve:

Sean, it's been such a pleasure and I'd be happy to come back anytime.

Sean Blake:

Great. Thanks so much.

Melissa Reeve:

Thank you.

"We spoke in detail about scaling agile, being a SAFe fellow, discipline, the traits of effective leaders and how to trust your people."

Transcript

Nick Muldoon:

Good day, folks. Thanks for joining us for another Easy Agile Podcast. This morning, I'm joined by Em Campbell-Pretty of Pretty Agile. Em is one of 22 SAFe fellows globally and she's been doing agile transformations at scale for over a decade now. She's also the author of two books, The Art of Avoiding a Train Wreck and Tribal Unity. So, all about culture and psychological safety here, and all about obviously scaling agile release trains, tips and tricks.

Nick Muldoon:

My key takeaways that I was really jazzed about, the traits of effective leaders for scaling agile transformations and being an effective organization, trust, as in trusting their people, an openness to learning and a willingness to learn, the ability to experiment and treat things as failures if they are failures, and discipline. Em and I talked a bit about discipline today as a trait of leaders. It's a really great episode and I took a lot from it, and you'll hear my takeaways at the end and what I need to go and learn after some time with Em this morning. So, let's get started. How many weeks a year are you typically on the road?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

How many weeks a year am I typically on the road? A lot, most. It would be unusual for me to spend four weeks without going somewhere. That would be unusual. I don't travel every week, but I travel most weeks, and I travel in big blocks. Right? So, I'll go and do ... Like I said, just before the lockdown, we did three weeks in Auckland, so that was in February-March.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

We went to Auckland, we had a client in Auckland, we just stayed there. So, three weeks in Auckland, came back here, and did not return to Auckland. Returned to support that client virtually over Teams and Zoom was how that one went. But yeah. Normally between running around Australia, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, the US, New Zealand, yeah, not home that often, normally. This has been truly bizarre.

Nick Muldoon:

So, this is a very unusual year for someone like yourself that's flying around visiting clients all over the world.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's been a very strange year. It's an interesting difference on energy as well. Not flying all the time I think is good for my body. I feel the difference. I also feel the difference sitting in a chair all the time. So, I was traveling a lot, but I was on my feet most days when I was working. Now if I'm working, I'm sitting a lot.

Nick Muldoon:

You're sitting down. Yeah.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, that's interesting. But I don't miss the jet lag at all. I don't miss the amount of time the travel consumes at all. In fact, it's been nice. I've had a little bit of head space. I've probably blogged more this year than I have in a few years because I've just had some head space and being able to think. But I don't get to see the world either, and all my holidays got canceled. So, nevermind work. I had trips to Europe. Four weeks from now, I was supposed to be in Canada seeing polar bears.

Nick Muldoon:

Aw.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Tell me about it!

Nick Muldoon:

I would love to see polar bears. They look so cuddly on TV. I'm not sure that that would actually be the circumstance if I was to try to approach one and give one a cuddle.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. I don't think cuddling was involved. I was told I could bring a camera and a tripod, which means obviously I'm going to stand some distance away from this polar bear and take photos. But that will not be happening either. So, no holidays and no travel for work, and of course, being in Melbourne, not even any, let's just go to [crosstalk 00:04:15].

Nick Muldoon:

Coffee or anything like that.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Just nothing.

Nick Muldoon:

Nothing.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Nothing.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, because you've been on legit lockdown.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yep.

Nick Muldoon:

So, tell me then about the shift over the last 10 or 15 years in these scaled, agile transformations. Obviously today, like you described with this client in Auckland, everything's got to be remote. Presumably, not as effective. But I'd love to get a sense of what the evolution is from the transformations 10 years ago, banking, telcos, that sort of environment to the clients that you're working with today. Describe what it was like 10 years ago.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, 10 years ago, and it's so interesting to reflect on this now, I read Scaling Software Agility, which is a book that Dean published in 2007. Then I discovered that wasn't the latest book, so then I read Agile Software Requirements. This was 2011. I'm this crazy, angry business sponsor with this program of work I'd been sponsoring for five years that's never delivered anything, and in this cra-

Nick Muldoon:

You were the crazy, angry business sponsor?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was the crazy [inaudible 00:05:26]. I was very angry. You would be angry too if you were me. I refer to it now as the money fire. So, basically, here's my job. Right? Go to the CFO, ask for money. Give the money to IT. IT lights a match, sets it on fire. Comes back, asks me for money. I get to go back to the CFO and say I need more money. Five years. Five years. That's all I did. Ask for money and try to explain where the other money went.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Anyway, in the strangest restructure ever, I end up the technology GM for the same group I had been the business sponsor of for the past five years. Apparently, they couldn't find anybody appropriately qualified. So, you can do it, Em. Sure. So, I'm a bit of a geek, so I read books, and I'm reading these books by Leffingwell because I'd been doing some agile ... So, I'd been doing something I'd been calling agile. Let's just go with that.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

It was interesting to me because I could see little rays of light. But it still wasn't really making anything happen, so hence the reading. These books talk about this agile release train [inaudible 00:06:46] that sounds cool. We should so do this thing. So, I set about launching this train at a Telstra in early 2012. It wasn't called SAFe, right? It was just the books and these things called an agile release train.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Now, to look back 10 years ago, it wasn't called SAFe. People weren't running around doing this. I was not actually really qualified for the job I was in. Well, I wasn't a technology leader by any stretch of the imagination, and I decide that I'm just going to launch an agile release train. So, there were rare and unusual beasts, and I'm not sure I really understood that when I went down the path of doing it.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

I'm big on the, I read it in a book, I read it in a blog, I heard it at a conference, I'll just try it. That's very much always been my mental model. So, I read it in a book and I just tried it. Then we discover that actually, literally nobody is doing this, so it becomes Australia's first agile release train and Australia's first SAFe implementation. Oh, boy, have I learned a lot since then.

Nick Muldoon:

Well, yeah. I was reflecting on that because I dug out The Art of Avoiding a Train Wreck, right? This is one of the ones that you signed for Tegan. But obviously, you've learned a ton since then because you've managed to put together a tome of tips and tricks and things to avoid as you are pursuing these transformations. As an industry, though, well, as an industry, I guess this spans many industries, but as a practice these days, are we actually getting better at these transformations? Are there companies out there today, Em, that are still taking piles of money and setting it on fire?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, I think I meet people every day who hear my story and go, "Oh, my god. You used to work here?" So, I think there's still many, many organizations that have an experience that is like the experience I had back in 2010 and what have you. So, it seems to be something that really resonates with people. I guess so many of the businesses we go into now either are not agile at all or, I guess like my world was, doing something they call agile. What we find is the something that they call agile, I wouldn't say it's not agile. But it leaves a lot to be desired.

Nick Muldoon:

They're on a journey, right?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess so because they end up having a conversation with us. So, they understand that what they're doing is not enough. They understand that what they're doing isn't getting them the results that they want. I don't know that they understand why. It's interesting to me sometimes that they look to SAFe because you asked me about how's the client base changed? One of the things that's really interesting in Australia is we get far more of the small to medium sized companies now than the big ones.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, they're companies that consider themselves agile. But what we're calling them, the startups that are no longer startups, right? These are organizations that they're generally old 10, 20 year old startups and they're scaling and they see their problem as a scaling problem. So, that's what leads them to a conversation around the scaled agile framework.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

When we look at them through a SAFe lens, we go, "Gee, you're tiny. But okay. I can see that you can have an agile release train and it won't do you any harm. In fact, it would probably help you a lot in terms of mid-range planning," because mid-range planning just seems to be nonexistent for a lot of these organizations. Prioritization. A lot of these small organizations, very knee-jerky in terms of how they prioritize, bouncing from one thing to the other.

Nick Muldoon:

Are they reacting to the market, or are they reacting to the leaders, maybe the lack of discipline in the leadership?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

You know what? They would say they're reacting to the market. I would say they've got a discipline issue.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:11:23].

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, I read, obviously, big reader, last summer, obviously Australian summer, US winter, I read Melissa Perry's The Build Trap. Interesting book and your well respected thought leader in product management. Not a big fan of SAFe. Probably not a big fan of agile either was the takeaway I had from her book. But the thing that she does talk about that I really thought was valuable was the lunacy in chasing your competitors. So, building features because your competitors-

Nick Muldoon:

Your competitors [crosstalk 00:12:06].

Em Campbell-Pretty:

... build them, or building features to land a contract or retain a customer. So, I thought she sees all of that as lunacy, and I tend to agree. So, that was my ... I think that's quite interesting. Her perspective is you don't know if the competitor's actually having any luck with that thing that they've built. So, if you build it because they built it, you don't know. You have no idea. So, don't just build it because they've built it. It might not be doing them any favors either.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Of course, once you start just doing random stuff for this big customer or this big client, you start to lose your way as an organization. People end up with completely different versions of their products, branches that they can't integrate anymore. It's interesting. So, when I look at that, I go, "I feel like there's a discipline issue in some of these organizations at the leadership level."

Em Campbell-Pretty:

What is it we're trying to do? What is our vision? What is our mission? What is our market? What are we doing to test and learn in that market, as opposed to just get a gun, let's do everything, grab everything? Oh, my goodness. They were doing that over there. Stop this, start this, stop this. Of course, if you're stopping and starting all the time, you're not delivering anything, and that seems to be something that we see a lot with these organizations. They're not delivering.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

I'm not saying their delivery mechanism is perfect. There's challenges there too. But some part of the problem is the inability to stay a course. Pick a course and stay a course. I'm not saying don't pivot, because that's stupid too. But being more deliberate in your choices to pivot, perhaps. Yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

Do you get a sense, Em, that there are leadership teams in various geographic regions that are more effective at this and more effective at that longterm planning and having that discipline and that methodical approach to delivery over an extended time period?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

I think regions and cultures and nationalities certainly play a role in the leadership, I don't know, persona, personality. I don't know that I could say when I've worked in this country or this part of the world that their leaders are better at forethought. I think some cultures lend themselves to lean and agile more than others. Hierarchical cultures are really, really challenging.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

That can be both a geographic thing, but it can also just be an industry thing, right? So, government can be very hierarchical. The banks can be very hierarchical. Some of the Asian cultures are very hierarchical. But some companies are just very hierarchical as well. So, who owns the company, who leads the company, all of that can play a big role in what's acceptable because so much of success in this scaled agile journey comes down to a leadership that is willing to trust the teams, a leadership that is willing to learn, a leadership that's willing to experiment, and a leadership that's prepared to be disciplined.

Nick Muldoon:

So, leadership with trusting the teams, willing to learn, willing to experiment, and with discipline. They're those four things that you-

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yep.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, okay. I'll make a note of those, Em. I'll come back to those. Trust, learn, experiment, and discipline. I'm interested, I guess, this year being a very interesting, a very unique year for doing remote transformation work and coaching and consulting, 10 years ago, what was the percentage of remote team members distributed teams? Now, you've basically, I think the big banks in Australia aren't even going back to the office until 2021. Atlassian is not going back to the office until 2021. Twitter, Jack Dorsey, my old CEO, said, "Work from home forever," sort of thing. What's the takeaway for this year and what do you expect for 2021 and beyond?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, look. This year has been eyeopening, and look, some things are, as I would have anticipated, some things have been different. So, obviously, we're seeing entire organizations going online. We're seeing the teams are online, the PI planning's online, everything's online. That's actually in some ways opened up opportunity. So, where we've had clients who have had the most odd setups in terms of distribution, and you can make a train work where you've got teams across two locations. But we're big fans of the entire team is in Sydney or the entire team is in India. We don't have half the team in Sydney and half the team in India.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

But organizations really struggle with that because perhaps all the testers are in India and then you want a tester on every team and now you've got a problem. How do you create a complete team and not cross the time zones? So, the opportunity becomes if I can find teams that are not physically co-located but time zone friendly, I have a little bit more option. So, I can have a train that operates between, I don't know, Sydney and India. Or I can find a four hour overlap in their day, and I can insist that that team works 100% online.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, the big thing that we'd advise against is I don't want that team hybrid. Right? I don't want three people sitting in the office in Sydney and three people sitting in their homes in India. I want everybody online. I want an even playing field, and I think we can do that now in a way that is more acceptable than before. Because the same advice I was giving, gee, back when I wrote Tribal Unity, same advice. Right?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, 2016, everybody, equal playing field. If you're going to be distributed, everyone has to be online, as opposed to some people online and some people in a room. So, that's a more acceptable answer now than it was prior to this year. So, that's good. I think that's good.

Nick Muldoon:

In 2021, then, Em, you mean this is just going to play forward. I guess there's going to be a reversion of some of these companies back to the office because they've got huge real estate and workplace infrastructure already.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. So, look. We're seeing clients closing offices the same way that you see some of the companies in the US doing that. We're also seeing parts of Australia and New Zealand with no particular COVID impact at this point actually going back into the office, and having created that example of teams that are crossing time zones, and then going back into the office and going back to that hybrid space. So, that's interesting and [crosstalk 00:20:08].

Nick Muldoon:

So, where you're back into that environment where you might have some people working together in an office that can get a cup of coffee together and then some that are stuck still at home. I guess there's not just even regional differences, right? If you've got a team member that's got a particular health situation, they're not going to feel comfortable necessarily coming back into the office, regardless of the situation, until there's a vaccine or something.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Absolutely.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, okay.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, yeah. Look, I think it's going to be interesting. I would strongly advocate that organizations have teams that are either in person teams or online teams, and the team just either operates 100% online or the team operates 100%-

Nick Muldoon:

In the office.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

... in person and in the office, and if you have a train that has both in any train level ceremony, everybody goes to a desk and-

Nick Muldoon:

And do it online.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

... a video camera and we do it that way. I think the thing that seems to be most sticky about the physical environment and SAFe is PI planning. Nobody needs to beat. Right? That was cool. Nobody needs to beat, no one's PI planning slipped, everybody just went. They were all online. So, we'll just PI plan online. It'll be fine. We saw people use whatever infrastructure they had available to them.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:21:30].

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, I'm sure a number of people called you folks and said, "We need a tool." But some just went, "We have Google Suite, we have Microsoft whatever it is, we have this, we have that. We're just going to make it work," and no matter what they used, they made it work and they ran the events and their events were effective and they got the outcomes. The big thing that is missing is that energy. You can't get the energy of 100, 200 people in a room from an online event. But mechanically-

Nick Muldoon:

We can achieve it.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

... we can achieve it. So, we hear everybody wants to go back to PI planning in person because of the social, because of the energy, which I think is awesome. I absolutely think that is awesome, and I can see this world in which people do a lot more work from home, work remote, whatever that looks like, and then the PI planning events are the things that we do to bring ourselves together and reconnect on that eight, 10, 12 week basis. That's my feeling. Could be wrong.

Nick Muldoon:

I guess I'll be really interested to see how it plays out, and I think we should return to this conversation in 12 months, Em.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. Oh, no.

Nick Muldoon:

I'm just thinking, what's going through my mind is one of our customers in New York, financial services company, and for one of their arts, it was 150,000 US exercised to bring their people together once a quarter.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. Wow.

Nick Muldoon:

I'm now going, I'm like, "Okay, yes, they're doing it digitally now." That's fine. They're going to miss out on things. But if they lose the budget, do they have to fight to get the budget back? Or does the budget sit there? There's these other unknown ramifications of this shift over the course of 2020 that we're yet to see play out, I guess.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

I think you're right, and I think it would be particularly interesting for the trains that have been launched remotely. So, if the train has been launched remotely, do you ev-

Nick Muldoon:

So, not existing trains that have been working together for six to 12, 18 months. But you want to get a brand new train started. Have you done that remotely this year with some of your clients?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Oh, we're in the process of doing it now.

Nick Muldoon:

Cool. Tell me.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

We had one, though, literally just before the lockdown. So, they did their first PI planning face to face and then immediately moved to remote working and, yeah, now working on remotely launching a train. For us, we have a playbook. It's a bunch of workshops. It's a bunch of classes. We just use online collaboration tools. We've found things that replicate the sort of tools that we would have in a physical room, and the joy of being able to read people's Post-it notes, right? This has been the absolute highlight for me, the joy of being able to read people's Post-it notes.

Nick Muldoon:

No more hieroglyphics.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Nick Muldoon:

What is that that you wrote, Sally? Yeah.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Everyone can say everything at once, right? So, you think about the classroom and the workshop where there's a group of people huddled around Post-its and a flip chart paper and they're still huddled in a way in their virtual huddle, but everybody can read, right? It's not that I'm not close enough, I can't read, I can't read your handwriting. There's this great equalizer is the online world. So, I think that's great. I think the challenge for the trains launched remotely is going to be do you ever get the face to face experience?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Because if I go back over the years, one of the things we know is your first PI planning event sets the standard. So, people get this imprint in their heads of what is possible. For example, if you skip something in your first PI planning event, you just decide to, I don't know, skip the confidence vote or something weird like that, you don't do the roam of the risks or you just skip something, you never do it because you're successful without it.

Nick Muldoon:

It never gets picked up. Yeah, okay.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

You're successful without it. So, every compromise you make, and you make a series of compromises, and then you're successful despite those compromises, and that becomes a false positive feasibility. It tells you, yes, I was right. I was right.

Nick Muldoon:

I don't need to do that.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

I didn't need to do those things because I was awesomely successful and I didn't do these things. So, it's the learning [crosstalk 00:26:15]-

Nick Muldoon:

That's confirmation bias, is it?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah, that's it. That's the one. Confirmation bias. That's exactly it. Yep. Yeah, and I think there's going to be a bunch of confirmation bias in these remotely launched trains, and unless they're inside organizations where there's enough knowledge of SAFe and the physical PI planning to know that there's going to be value in bringing them together, but I can see that being a real challenge. I think trains that are launched online may never go into a physical PI planning event because of that confirmation bias.

Nick Muldoon:

All right.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

That makes me really sad.

Nick Muldoon:

I want to come back to something you said before about the leaders, and you mentioned the trust, the openness to learning and experimentation, and the discipline. I was going back over your SAFe Global 2018 talk about the seven traits of highly effective servant leaders.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yep.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yep.

Nick Muldoon:

I guess I had some questions about this, and obviously, these are four of the traits. What are the other three traits that I'm missing? Then I've got a followup question about some of the actual things that you talked about that you picked up in your trip.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

[inaudible 00:27:29] one of those four on the list I had in 2018.

Nick Muldoon:

I'll quiz you on it.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

How awkward. So, in 2018, the answer was people first, a respect for people, that sort of lens, lean thinking, manager, teacher, learner. So, we had that one. Yeah. Learner. [inaudible 00:28:00] crazy. What else did I have? [inaudible 00:28:10].

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah. Okay. I wanted to talk about that one, actually. I made a note about that. What is that, and are there examples of that in the West?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

A lot of people talk about true north.

Nick Muldoon:

[inaudible 00:28:28]. True north.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. True north. The translation I got, which I got from Mr. [inaudible 00:28:39], who partnered with Katie Anderson for the lean study tour I did in, I don't know, '18, '17, '18, 2018, I think, so the translation he gave was direction and management sort of things. So, it's mission, right? It's strategic mission. It's that sort of thing.

Nick Muldoon:

So, just a sidebar here for anyone that hasn't seen Em's talk on this, there's a woman by the name of Katie Anderson. She runs an annual, I think, I guess not this year, but she runs an annual-

Em Campbell-Pretty:

No, not this year. She did not go this year.

Nick Muldoon:

... not this year, runs an annual lean, Kanban, kaizen study tour to Japan and visits ... Who did you visit, Em? You visited with Katie. How many were in the crew that you went over there with?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, I think it was a group of about 20 from memory. Katie lived in Japan for two years and then went back to the US. She lives in San Francisco, I think. While she was there, she really liked the idea of putting together these lean study tours. She was already a lean practitioner more in the healthcare side of things. So, she got the opportunity to ... We actually were on a test run tour.

Nick Muldoon:

Oh, cool.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, this was her experiment. She had a relationship with Ohio State University and they brought some people to the table and she brought some people to the table and they made it happen. She also had an existing relationship with Mr. [inaudible 00:30:24], who was John [inaudible 00:30:26] first manager at Toyota. So, he's a 40 year Toyota veteran.

Nick Muldoon:

Veteran.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

He came with us for the week. So, we of course went to Toyota, but we went to a bunch of Toyota suppliers as well. Isuzu, [inaudible 00:30:43]. Then we also went to Japan Post, which was fascinating. We went to a city which name escapes me right now, but they called it 5S City because all the companies in that city practice the 5S, the manufacturing 5S.

Nick Muldoon:

Tell me about it. It's not coming to mind. I don't feel comfortable or familiar.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

You don't feel good about 5S?

Nick Muldoon:

No.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

No. That's not good. So, how would I ... The 5S is five Japanese words, which I'm going to go ... Yeah. My Japanese, nothing. But it's about standardized work. So, for example, when you go into the 5S factories, you'll see the floors marked up where you need to stand to do a particular job.

Nick Muldoon:

[crosstalk 00:31:41] This is what Paul Aikas picked up for his-

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Oh, no.

Nick Muldoon:

I feel like I've seen Paul Aikas' videos of their manufacturing in the US that everything's marked up.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Probably. That would be my guess. We should ask Teddy.

Nick Muldoon:

We can ask Paul, and we can ask all these people. There's time.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Well, yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Okay.

Nick Muldoon:

So, that lean tour, the Japan study tour, that was a super effective and motivating thing for you?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. For me, it was very reinforcing. So, I had I guess my own lens on what lean leadership meant, and I found that particular tour to be very reinforcing around the value set that I believe is part of that. Katie [inaudible 00:32:43] created [inaudible 00:32:44] that is designed to show you that. So, she's often very clear that says this is not Japan, right? This is not a reorganization into Japan. This is not every leader in Japan.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

This is, I've hand picked a series of lean leaders to show you it being practiced. But it was certainly very reinforcing for me. So, very similar messages I picked up in terms of how I like to head, how I coach others to lead was built into the messages that she delivered. So, it was very cool. It was very cool. Some of those leaders, just so inspiring, particular kaizen. I think the thing that just really hits you in the face as you're talking to these folks is kaizen, this drive to get better.

Nick Muldoon:

All the time.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

All the time. Absolutely. It's these folks looking for, they're looking for the one second, right?

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

The one second improvements. There's a video that floats around. Have you seen the Formula 1 video-

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

... where they do, yeah, the changeover in 63 and it takes them over a minute and they do the changeover in 90-something in Melbourne and it takes them six seconds or whatever it is. It's like that, right? It's that how do I find one more second, half a second? They're just so driven. If I can remove a step that someone has to take, can I move something closer to somebody?

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah. There was some comment in the presentation that you gave. There was some comment about if I have to take another five steps, that's an extra 10 seconds. Then that's an extra 10 seconds every time I do this activity every day, and that all adds up. So, how do we shave these seconds off and be more effective and deliberate about how we do this?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

That was just huge, right? I called it kaizen crazy in the presentation. I'm just so, so driven to improve, and just tiny, small improvements every day.

Nick Muldoon:

So, one of the other practices that I didn't grok out of that talk was about the Bus Stop. What was the Bus Stop about?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Was that in that talk? Really?

Nick Muldoon:

I'm forcing you to stretch your mind [crosstalk 00:34:57].

Em Campbell-Pretty:

You are. You are. You are. You are quite right. It really was [inaudible 00:35:01]. Okay. Oh, you're awful.

Nick Muldoon:

Yes.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yes. Yes, you are. Okay. So, effective leaders are human was the tagline on that one. It was really about leaders being down to Earth and being one with the teams. So, things I saw in Japan, this factory run by a woman, [inaudible 00:35:42], I think it was, so very unusual. Not a lot of women leaders in Japan. Her husband took her name because [inaudible 00:35:52]. It's a really interesting character.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

But her company has a bunch of morning rituals. You always say good morning and thank you and how they talk every day and everybody talks and everyone interacts. Then one of the other places we went to, they all had their uniforms they wore in the factory. But everybody wore the uniform, right? The CEO, the office workers, and everybody wore the uniform. Everyone was one.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Then I was thinking about my experience leading teams, and a lifetime ago, I was working with a team that decided to enter a corporate competition. This competition was about showing your colors and showing the corporate values, which were things like better together and courage, and then [inaudible 00:36:49] a rainbow thing. So, this team decides what they're going to do, is it an address up in the rainbow colors, and they're going to be better together and show their courage and they're going to do the Macarena and they're going to video it and that's going to be how they're going to win this competition.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

I did not participate in this Macarena because someone has to take photos and stuff, right? How else are they going to enter the competition? So, had to do my bit. Anyway, we also had this ritual, which was about teams bringing challenges to leadership to resolve, and they did at the end of every spring. So, they do this Macarena and they film it and they enter the competition and at the end of the spring, they bring their challenges to leadership.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Their challenge is Em did not do the Macarena. You are our leader, you did not do the Macarena. We are feeling very challenged by that, and we're bringing this to you to resolve. So, I went and spoke to the team that raised and said, "Look. I got to tell you. I don't know the Macarena. So, sorry." I still remember this so clearly. One of the guys said to me, "I read this blog about the importance of leaders being vulnerable." You know who wrote that blog post, don't you?

Nick Muldoon:

Oh, Em. Oh. You have it.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, we negotiated. I said, "Look. I think I can manage the Bus Stop." For those not from Australia, we grow up doing this in high school dances. In my part of the world, anyway. So, I grabbed my leadership team and we did do the Bus Stop and it was part of proving that we too were the same as everybody else and doing our bit and responding to the team's feedback. So, yes. That is where the Bus Stop fits in. Thanks so much for that, Nick.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay. No, I appreciate that. Now, I'm glad that I got that context. I try and do similar things. Typically, it's a karaoke or something, or that we haven't done that in a while. Yeah, okay. So, I guess the thrust of that talk was really about to leaders to serve, and it was all about being in service of. It sounds like what you took from the Japan study tour was these leaders there were very much in service of their people.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Absolutely.

Nick Muldoon:

Do you see that as a trait that is prevalent in the best performing companies that you deal with, and how likely are they over a five, 10 year horizon, whatever that happens to be, to outperform their competitors or to be more successful in their market? Or I guess however they define success?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

I certainly see a correlation between leaders that like to serve and/or choose to serve and success with scaled agile, and business, because I guess we have seen over, it's close to 10 years, is those who practice together, your framework with discipline get results, and they get significant results. They improve their ability to deliver products and services, their cost base goes down, their quality goes up, their people are happier, their attrition goes down. We see it every single time.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

What we also see is when the leaders don't walk the talk, when the leaders are paying lip service to the transformation, it doesn't stick. They don't get the results. People don't find it a better place to work. People aren't bought into the change. So, there is definitely a correlation there. You can get pockets of wonderfulness inside an organization.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

We often observe that the organization that's transformation is as successful is the most bought in leader. Most senior bought in leader. So, if you're the leader of a train and you show the right behaviors, your train will be really great.

Nick Muldoon:

Successful.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

But that means nothing for the broader organization, solution train, the business unit, what have you. You see this thing that goes from the leader. If the leader's showing the right behaviors, you get within that space, you get the behaviors, you get the change, you get the results. But leaders who say one thing and do another, people don't buy it, right?

Nick Muldoon:

I guess this is true of any organizational change, isn't it?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

You hit the boundaries of your pocket, as you said, within the organization and then you meet the real world, the rest of the organization. People, maybe they don't have enough energy or they don't feel that they can influence and change that, and so they just live within their bubble because they don't feel that they can exert the pressure outside of that.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. Look. I've certainly, I've seen successful bubble influence organizations. Successful bubbles can become interesting. Chip and Dan Heath's book, which one was it, Switch.

Nick Muldoon:

Oh, yeah. Switch. Yeah.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

[inaudible 00:42:02]. Shine a light on bright spot or something like that. So, bright spots inspire, and if you can create a bubble in an organization that outperforms the rest of the organization, or even if it performs better than it has previously, then everybody looks. Right? How did the organization that goes from poor delivery to great deliveries is what is going on here? That inspires others to get interested. One of the really interesting things we've seen in Australia, we can trace pretty much every SAFe implementation in Australia back to the one at Telstra.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, right. They all spun off from that, from the people that were part of it.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Well, no. People who came and saw it. People who were inspired by it.

Nick Muldoon:

They're not necessarily directly involved in it.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

No. People came and got inspired by it, and then they went, did their thing, and then they inspired someone else. I haven't tried to do it recently, but there was a point in time we just could web together all of them because we could count them when we could see them. But we can web together most of them still. It says you saw someone who saw someone who saw someone who actually was someone who went to visit us at Telstra back in 2012, 2013 and got inspired.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, that bright spot can be really, really powerful, and that's what it takes, right? You get to add a little bit of noise, a little bit of difference, and people start to ask what's going on. I wouldn't say it's foolproof. I think it still requires, so someone's got to come, they've got to see, and then they've got to have the courage to do it for their part of the organization.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

That's the hard bit, right? I can come, I can see, I can get inspired. But am I prepared to put myself out there? There's a lot to be said for leaders who are prepared to take risks. That was one of the-

Nick Muldoon:

This was your lesson about the Bus Stop, right? You have to put yourself out there and be vulnerable.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. This was actually, I was thinking, was the thing I was talking about at last year's SAFe Summit was be safe or be SAFe.

Nick Muldoon:

Be safe or be SAFe. Tell me about that.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, be safe, don't take a risk, or be SAFe, as in the scaled agile framework, and take that leap of faith. It comes back to, we started talking today about when I did this at Telstra, I didn't really understand that this wasn't a normal everyday, this is what everybody did sort of thing. It was a very new thing. So, I took a risk from a perspective that I was a business leader in a technology space and I really felt I had nothing to lose.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

So, I look back and that and go, "What on Earth possessed me?" And I go, "Well, I'm this business person leading this technology team. I wasn't supposed to succeed anyway."

Nick Muldoon:

Put it all on the line, right?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

I found out later they actually had a plan for when I did not succeed. I was supposed to fail.

Nick Muldoon:

Wait. How much waste is that? Why did they plan for something before it was ... Okay.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Organizational policies. What can I tell you? Anyway, I did not fail. I did succeed, and because I took some crazy, calculated risks, and I've seen it time and time again, right? So many of these leaders in these companies that make this change are taking a leap of faith. I'm always saying I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen. I don't know whether you're going to get 10% cost out or 50% cost out. I don't know if your people are going to be 10% happier or 50% happier. I don't know that.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

What I do know is if you listen to what we're telling you and you follow the guidance and you behave in line with those lean and agile values, you will get results. You'll get results every single time. But you've got to be brave enough to buy in and take it on holistically and not do this thing where you manage to customize your way out of actually doing the thing-

Nick Muldoon:

Doing anything.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

... that you wanted to do.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah. Okay. Em, this was awesome. Before we finish up, I want to take two minutes. You've mentioned books a lot today and you reminded me of this quote, Verne Harnish, "Those who read and don't are only marginally better off than those who can't." So, today so far, you've mentioned Chip and Dan Heath with Switch, you've mentioned the Leffingwell series from the late noughties. There might have been a few others. But tell me, what are you reading today? You've been in lockdown. What are the two or three top books that you've read since you've been in lockdown in Melbourne?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Oh, my goodness. It's very awkward. Every time someone asks me, "What did you just read?" I go, "I don't know."

Nick Muldoon:

I don't think I remember.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Can't remember. It's terrible. What am I reading? I need to open my Kindle. I don't know what I'm reading. Geoffrey Moore, Zone to Win.

Nick Muldoon:

Zone to Win.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Zone to Win. I think that's what it's called. It's a newer book. I know this year, because obviously, I've read The Build Trap this year-

Nick Muldoon:

Yep. Melissa Perry. You mentioned that one. Yeah.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yep. I've read the Project to Product, Mik Kersten.

Nick Muldoon:

What was that one, Project to Product?

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Yeah. Project to Product, Mik Kersten. One of the IT Revolution press books. So, released just over a year ago. Very tied up in the SAFe 5.0 [crosstalk 00:48:21]. The other book tied up in the SAFe 5.0 release is John Kotter's Accelerate. So, I picked that back up. I read it a number of years ago when it first came out. But I like to revisit stuff when SAFe puts it front and center. Seems to make some sense to do that at that point in time.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, okay. It's interesting that, thinking about Verne Harnish, the scaling up framework, no relation to-

Em Campbell-Pretty:

No.

Nick Muldoon:

... scaled agile, for anyone that's not familiar. But so much of the scaling up framework about scaling businesses, they draw on so much content from existing offers, existing tomes, points of reference and experience, and it's super valuable, and I guess SAFe is no different, right? It draws on this wisdom of the collective wisdom.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

Absolutely. Absolutely. [inaudible 00:49:14] It was very fun to say in the early days, we stand on the shoulders of giants, a quote from somebody else whose name escapes me.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, okay. Well, Em, look. I wanted to thank you so much for your time this morning. This has been fantastic.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

No worries. It's great to catch up with you.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah. I guess my takeaways from this, I like the be safe or be SAFe, like either be safe and don't take any risks, or be SAFe and actually put yourself out there and step into scaled agile. I definitely have to go and do a bit of research on the five S's as well and learn a bit more about that. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Em Campbell-Pretty:

No worries, Nick. Great to see you.

"That's a wrap on Agile2022! It was great to be able to catch up with so many of you in the agile community in-person!" - Tenille Hoppo

This bonus episode was recorded LIVE at Agile2022 in Nashville!

The Easy Agile team got to speak with so many amazing people in the agile community, reflecting on conference highlights, key learnings, agile ceremonies + more!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to say G’Day and enjoyed a Tim Tam or two ;)

Huge thank you to all of our podcast guests for spending some time with us to create this episode!

• Cody Wooten
• Gil Broza
• Maciek Saganowski
• Lindy Quick
• Carey Young
• Leslie Morse
• Dan Neumann
• Joseph Falú
• Kai Zander
• Avi Schneier
• Doug Page
• Evan Leybourn
• Jon Kerr
• Joshua Seckel
• Rob Duval
• Andrew Thompson

Transcript

Caitlin:

Hi, everyone. Well, that's a wrap on Agile 2022 in Nashville. The Easy Agile team is back home in Australia, and we spent most of our journey home talking about all of the amazing conversations that we got to have with everyone in the Agile community. It was great catching up with customers, partners, seeing old friends, and making lots of new ones. We managed to record some snippets of those amazing conversations, and we're excited to share them with you, our Easy Agile Podcast audience. So enjoy.

Maciek:

[inaudible 00:00:26].

Tenille:

Maciek, thanks so much for taking time with us today.

Maciek:

No worries.

Tenille:

[inaudible 00:00:30], can you let us know what was the best thing you've learned this week?

Maciek:

Oh, that was definitely at Melissa Perri's talk. When she talked about... Like, to me, she was talking about slowing down. And what we do in Agile, it's not just delivery, delivery, delivery, but very much learning and changing on things that we already built, and finding out what value we can give to customers. Not just ship features, it's all about value. That's what I learned.

Tenille:

That's great. Thank you. So what do you think would be the secret ingredient to a great Agile team?

Maciek:

Humility. Somehow, the team culture should embrace humility and mistakes. And people should not be afraid of making mistakes, because without making mistakes, you don't learn. That's what I think.

Tenille:

So what would be, I guess, if there's one Agile ceremony that every team should do, what do you think that might be?

Maciek:

For sure, retro, and that comes back to the mistakes and learning part.

Tenille:

Yeah. Fantastic.

Maciek:

No worries.

Tenille:

That's great. Thanks so much for taking time.

Maciek:

Okay. Thank you.

Tenille:

Cheers.

Gil:

[inaudible 00:01:42].

Caitlin:

Gil:, thank you so much for chatting with us. So we're all at Agile 2022 in Nashville at the moment. There's lots of interesting conversations happening.

Gil:

Yes.

Caitlin:

If you could give one piece of advice to a new forming Agile team, what would it be?

Gil:

It would be to finish small, valuable work together. It has a terrible acronym, FSVWT. So it cannot be remembered that way. Finish small, valuable work together. There's a lot of talk about process, working agreements, tools. This is all important, but sometimes it's too much for a team that's starting out. And so if we just remember to finish small valuable work together, that's a great story.

Caitlin:

Yeah, I love that. And you were a speaker at conference?

Gil:

Yes.

Caitlin:

Can you give our audience a little bit of an insight into what your conversation was about?

Gil:

What happens in many situations is that engineering or development doesn't really work collaboratively with product/business. And instead, there is a handoff relationship. But what happens is that in the absence of a collaborative relationship, it's really hard to sustain agility. People make a lot of one-sided assumptions. And over time, how decisions get made causes the cost of change to grow, and the safety to make changes to decrease. And when that happens, everything becomes harder to do and slower to do, so the agility takes a hit. So the essence of the talk was how can we collaboratively, so both product and engineering, work in ways that make it possible for us to control the cost of change and to increase safety? So it's not just collaboration of any kind. There are very specific principles to follow. It's called technical agility, and when we do that, we can have agility long-term.

Caitlin:

Great. I love it. Well, thank you so much and I hope you enjoy the rest of your time at the conference.

Gil:

Thank you.

Caitlin:

Great. Thank you.

Tenille:

Hi, Tenille here from Easy Agile, with Josh from Deloitte, and we're going to have a good chat about team retrospectives. So Josh, thank you for taking the time to have a good chat. So you are a bit of an expert on team retrospectives. What are your top tips?

Josh:

So my top tips for retrospective is first, actually make a change. Don't do a lessons observed. I've seen lots of them actually make a change, even if it's just a small one at the end. The second, and part of that, is make your change and experiment. Something you can measure, something that you can actually say yes, we did this thing and it had an impact. May not be the impact you wanted, but it did have some kind of impact. The second tip is vary your retrospectives. Having a retrospective that's the same sprint after sprint after sprint will work for about two sprints, and then your productivity, your creativity out of the retrospective will significantly reduce.

Tenille:

That's an excellent point. So how do you create [inaudible 00:05:03]?

Josh:

Lots and lots of thinking about them and doing research and using websites like TastyCupcakes, but also developing my own retrospectives. I've done retrospective based on the Pixar pitch. There's six sentences that define every Pixar movie. Take the base sentences, apply them to your sprint or to your PI and do a retro, and allow the team that creativity to create an entire movie poster if they want to. Directed by [inaudible 00:05:34], because it happens. People get involved and engaged when you give them alternatives, different ways of doing retrospectives.

Tenille:

That's right. So for those teams that aren't doing retrospectives at the moment, what's the one key thing they need to think about that you... What's the one key thing you could tell them to encourage them to start?

Josh:

If you're not doing retrospectives, you're not doing [inaudible 00:05:54]. So I shouldn't say that. But if you're not doing retrospectives, if you truly believe that you have absolutely nothing to improve and you are 100% of the best of the best, meaning you're probably working at Google or Amazon or Netflix, although they do retrospectives. So if you truly believe that you are the equivalent of those companies, then maybe you don't need to do them, but I'm pretty sure that every team has something they can improve on. And acknowledging that and then saying, how are we going to do that? Retrospective's a very fast, easy way to start actually making those improvements and making them real.

Tenille:

Fantastic. Great. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat to us briefly about retrospectives.

Josh:

Thank you.

Caitlin:

We're here with Leslie, who is the president of women in Agile. Leslie, there was an amazing event on Sunday.

Leslie:

Yes.

Caitlin:

Just talk to us a little bit about it. What went into the planning? How was it to all be back together again?

Leslie:

It was amazing to have the women in Agile community back together, right? Our first time since 2019, when everyone was together in Washington DC for that event. The better part of six or seven months of planning, we had about almost 200 people in the room. Fortunately, we know the [inaudible 00:07:10] of what these women in Agile sessions that we do, part of the Agile Alliance conferences every year, right? We've got a general opening. We've got a great keynote who is always someone that is adjacent to the Agile space. We don't want to just like... We want to infuse our wisdom and knowledge with people that aren't already one of us, because we get all of the Agile stuff at the big conference when we're there.

Leslie:

So that part, we always have launching new voices, which is really probably one of my most favorite women in Agile programs. Three mentees that have been paired with seasoned speakers, taking stage for the first time to share their talent and their perspective. So that's really great. And then some sort of interacting networking event. So that pattern has served us really well since we've been doing this since 2016, which is a little scary to think it's been happening that long. And it's become a flagship opportunity for community to come together in a more global fashion, because the Agile Alliance does draw so many people for their annual event.

Caitlin:

Yeah, for sure. Well, it was a great event. I know that we all had a lot of fun being there. What was your one key takeaway from the event?

Leslie:

I'm going to go to [inaudible 00:08:14] interactive networking that she did with us, and really challenging us to lean into our courage around boundaries and ending conversations. We don't have to give a reason. If some conversation's not serving us or is not the place that we need to be for whatever reason, you absolutely have that agency within yourself to end that conversation and just move on. I love the tips and tricks she gave us for doing that well.

Caitlin:

Yes, yes, I love that too. That's great. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Leslie:

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Tenille:

Hi, Evan. How are you?

Evan:

Very good.

Tenille:

That's good. Can you please tell me what's the best thing you learned today?

Evan:

The best quote I've got, "Politics is the currency of human systems." Right?

Tenille:

Wow.

Evan:

So if you want to change a human system, you got to play the politics.

Tenille:

Fantastic.

Evan:

Which feels crappy, but-

Tenille:

It's the way it is.

Evan:

... that's the way it is.

Tenille:

[inaudible 00:09:07]. Okay, next question. What is the Agile ceremony that you and your team can't live without?

Evan:

Retrospective. With the retrospective, you can like create everything else.

Tenille:

Fantastic. That's really good. And what do you think is probably the key ingredient to a good retrospective?

Evan:

Oh, trust. Trust requires respect. It requires credibility. It requires empathy. So trust is like that underpinning human capability.

Tenille:

Yeah. Fantastic. Thanks very much.

Evan:

Thank you.

Tenille:

Yes.

Caitlin:

Right. We're here with Cody from Adfire. So Cody, how you enjoyed the conference so far?

Cody:

I'm really loving the conference. It's been awesome. To be honest, when we first got here, it seemed maybe a little bit smaller than we thought, but the people here's been incredible, highly engaged, which was always great. And plus, a lot of people are using Jira and Atlassian. So lot of big points.

Caitlin:

Win-win for both, huh?

Cody:

Yeah. Always, always, always.

Caitlin:

Very good.

Cody:

Yeah.

Caitlin:

Lots of interesting talks happening. Have you attended any that have really sparked an interest in you? What's [inaudible 00:10:15]-

Cody:

Yeah. I can't remember any of the talk names right off the top, but they've all been incredibly insightful. Tons of information. It seems like there's been a topic for everything, which is always a great sign and stuff like that. So my notes, I have pages and pages and pages of notes, which is always a good sign.

Caitlin:

Yeah, that's [inaudible 00:10:34].

Cody:

So I'm I have to go back and [inaudible 00:10:35] again.

Caitlin:

Yes.

Cody:

But it's been incredible and the talks have been very plentiful, so yeah.

Caitlin:

Good. Good. And what is the one key takeaway that you are looking forward to bringing back and sharing with the team?

Cody:

Well, I think one of the key takeaways for us was that... I talked about the engagement that everybody has, but one thing that's been incredible is to hear everybody's stories, to hear everybody's problems, their processes, all of that stuff. So all of that information's going to be a great aggregate for us to take back and create a better experience with our product and all that good stuff. So yeah.

Caitlin:

For sure. I love it. Now, I have one last question for you. It's just a fun one. It's a true or false. We're doing Aussie trivia. Are you ready for this one?

Cody:

Okay.

Caitlin:

Okay.

Cody:

Hopefully.

Caitlin:

So my true or false is, are Budgy Smugglers a type of bird?

Cody:

Are buggy smugglers-

Caitlin:

Budgy Smugglers.

Cody:

Budgy Smugglers.

Caitlin:

A type of bird.

Cody:

True.

Caitlin:

False. No.

Cody:

What are they?

Caitlin:

Speedos.

Cody:

Yeah. Well, I've got some of those up there in my luggage. So I'll bring the budgys out now.

Caitlin:

With your Daisy Dukes.

Cody:

Exactly. Exactly.

Caitlin:

Yeah. And cowboy boots, right?

Cody:

Yeah.

Caitlin:

Well, thank you so much.

Cody:

Thank you.

Caitlin:

Very appreciate it.

Cody:

Yeah. Thank you.

Tenille:

Doug, how are you?

Doug:

I'm great. Thank you.

Tenille:

Awesome. Well, tell me about, what's the best thing you've learned today?

Doug:

I think learning how our customers are using our products that we didn't even know about is really interesting.

Tenille:

That's amazing. Have you had a chance to get out to many of the sessions at all?

Doug:

I actually have not. I've been tied to this booth, or I've been in meetings that were already planned before I even came down here.

Tenille:

[inaudible 00:12:01].

Doug:

Yeah.

Tenille:

That's good. So when you're back at work, what do you think is probably the best Agile ceremony that you and your team can't live without?

Doug:

I think what I'm bringing back to the office is not so much ceremony. It's really from a product perspective. I work in product management. So for us, it's how we can explain how our product brings value to our customers. So many lessons learned from here that we're really anxious to bring back and kind of build into our value messaging.

Tenille:

Fantastic.

Doug:

Yeah.

Tenille:

Thanks. That's great. Thanks very much.

Caitlin:

He was one of the co-authors of the Agile Manifesto. Firstly, how are you doing in conference so far?

John:

Well, working hard.

Caitlin:

Yeah, good stuff.

John:

Enjoying Nashville.

Caitlin:

Yeah. It's cool, isn't it? It's so different from the [inaudible 00:12:46] what's happening.

John:

Yeah. It's good. Yes. It's nice to see a lot of people I haven't seen in a while.

Caitlin:

Yeah. Yeah.

John:

And seeing three dimensional.

Caitlin:

Yes. Yeah, I know. It's interesting-

John:

It's there-

Caitlin:

... [inaudible 00:12:54] and stuff happening.

John:

Yeah, IRL.

Caitlin:

Lots of interesting [inaudible 00:13:01] that's happening. Any key takeaways for you? What are you going to take after to share with the team?

John:

Oh, well, that's a good question. I'm mostly been talking with a lot of friends that I haven't seen in a while. [inaudible 00:13:14].

Caitlin:

Yes.

John:

And since I've only been here a couple days, I haven't actually gone for much, if anything. To be frank.

Caitlin:

I know. Well, we're pretty busy on the boots, aren't we?

John:

Yeah. Yeah. But certainly, the kinds of conversations that are going on are... I was a little bit worried about Agile. Like, I don't want to say... Yeah, I don't want to say it. But I don't want to say, Agile's becoming a jump turf.

Caitlin:

Yes.

John:

But I think there's a lot of people here that are actually really still embracing the ideals and really want to learn, do and practice [inaudible 00:14:00].

Caitlin:

Yeah.

John:

So I'm frankly surprised and impressed and happy. There's a lot. If you just embrace more of the manifesto, and maybe not all of the prescriptive stuff sometimes, and you get back to basics. [inaudible 00:14:22]-

Caitlin:

Yeah. So let's talk about that, the Agile Manifesto that you mentioned. Embracing that. What does embracing mean? Can you elaborate on that a bit more? So we know we've got the principles there. Is there one that really stands out more than another to you?

John:

Well, my world of what I was doing at the time, and I'd done a lot of defense department, water haul, and built my own sort of lightweight process, as we call it before Agile. So to me, the real key... This doesn't have the full-

Caitlin:

Full manifesto, yeah.

John:

But if you go to the website and read at the top, it talks about like we are uncovering ways by doing, and I'm still learning, still uncovering. And I think it's important for people to realize we really did leave our ego at the door. Being humble in our business is super important. So that might not be written anywhere in the principles, but if the whole thing at the preamble at the top, and the fact that we talk about how we value those things on the blog versus the whole... There's a pendulum that you could see both of those things collide. That, in my opinion, one the most important trait that we should exercise is being humble, treating things as a hypothesis. Like, don't just build features [inaudible 00:15:58] bottom up, how do you seek up on the answers, that's what I want people to takeaway.

Caitlin:

That's great. That's great advice. Well, thank you so much, John. Appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.

John:

You're welcome, Caitlin.

Caitlin:

Yeah. Enjoy what's [inaudible 00:16:11].

John:

Thank you.

Caitlin:

Thank you.

John:

[inaudible 00:16:13] tomorrow.

Caitlin:

All right.

Tenille:

Abukar, thanks for joining us today. Can I ask you both, what do you think is the best thing you've learned today?

Avi:

Best thing I've learned?

Tenille:

Yeah.

Avi:

That's a really interesting one. Because I'm here at the booth a lot, so I'll get to attend a lot of things. So there were two things I learned that were really important. One, which is that the Easy Agile logo is an upside down A, because it means you're from Australia. So it's down under. And then the second most important thing I learned about today was we were in a session talking about sociocracy, and about how to make experiments better with experiments, which sounded a little weird at first, but it was really all about going through like a mini A3 process. For those of you listening, that's something that was done to Toyota. It's a structured problem solving method, but instead of going [inaudible 00:17:02] around it and going through the experiment, going around two or three times and then deciding that's the right experiment you're going forward.

Tenille:

Thank you. How about your time?

Kai:

I've been at the booth most of the time, but from that you meet a lot of people all over the world. And we really have like one thing in common, which is wanting to help people. And it's really been nice to be in a room of people if they're at the beginning of their journey or their really seasoned, that their motivation is just to really empower others. So it's been really nice to be around that kind of energy.

Avi:

We've really learned that our friends from Australia are just as friendly up here as you are on the other side. I feel when you come on this side, you get mean, but it turns out you're just as nice up here too.

Tenille:

Well, it depends how long you've been on flight.

Avi:

Oh, exactly.

Tenille:

[inaudible 00:17:44], we're okay.

Kai:

Yeah.

Avi:Abukar:

Exactly. Good.

Tenille:

All right. One more question here.

Avi:

Sure.

Tenille:

What do you think is the secret ingredient for a successful team?

Avi:

What do I think the secret? Oh, that's a really good question. That's a-

Kai:

He's the best one to answer that question.

Avi:

That's a little longer than a two-second podcast, but I'll tell you this. It may not be psychological safety,-

Tenille:

Okay.

Avi:

... just because Google said that and Project Aristotle show that. I think to have a really, really successful team, you need a really skilled scrum master. Because to say that the team has psychological safety is one ingredient, it's not the only ingredient. A strong scrum master is someone who's really skilled to create that psychological safety, but also help with all the other aspects of getting ready to collaborate and coordinate in the most positive way possible. Plus, searching for... Her name is Cassandra. On Slack, she calls herself Kaizen. You get it? It's a joke. But that's the whole thing is that a really skilled scrum master helps the teams find the kaizens that they need to really get to become high performing. So psychological safety is an enabler of it, but that doesn't mean it creates the performance. It's an ingredient to make it happen.

Tenille:

Fantastic.

Kai:

There's no better answer than that one. Let's do exclamation.

Tenille:

Excellent. Thanks very much for taking the time.

Avi:

Thank you so much.

Kai:

Of course.

Hayley:

We're here with Carey from Path to Agility. Carey, what have you been really loving about this conference?

Carey:

I think I've loved the most about this conference so far is the interaction with all the people that are here. It's really nice to get together, meet different folks, network around, have the opportunity to see what else is out there in the marketplace. And then, of course, talk about the product that we have with Path to Agility. It's a wonderful experience to get out here and to see everybody. And it's so nice to be back out in person instead of being in front of a screen all the time.

Tenille:

Yeah, absolutely. Have you had a chance to get to many of the sessions?

Joseph:

I've tried to as much as I can, but it's also important to take that time to decompress and let everything sink in. So here we are having fun.

Tenille:

Yeah, absolutely. So thinking back to work, what do you think is the one Agile ceremony that you take that helps you and your team the most?

Joseph:

I think that finding different ways to collaborate, effective ways to collaborate. And in terms of work management, how are we solving some of the problems that we have? There's so many tools that are here to make that easier, which is made pretty special. Speaking to people and finding out how they go about solving problems.

Tenille:

And what do you think makes a really great Agile team?

Joseph:

Well, you could say something very cliche, like being very adaptive and change and so on and so forth. But I think it really comes down to the interaction between people. Understanding one another, encouraging one another, and just the way you work together.

Tenille:

Fantastic. Great. Well, thanks very much for taking the time to chat.

Joseph:

Thank you. It was nice chatting with you guys all week long.

Tenille:

Cheers.

Tenille:

Dan, thanks for taking the time to chat.

Dan:

You're welcome.

Tenille:

[inaudible 00:22:54] questions. What do you think is the best thing you learned today?

Dan:

Oh, the best thing I learned today, the morning products keynote was excellent. Got a couple tips on how to do product management, different strategies, how you have folks about seeing their focus on the tactical and the strategic. So just some nice little nuggets, how to [inaudible 00:23:12].

Tenille:

[inaudible 00:23:13], thanks for joining us today. Can I start by asking, what do you think is the best thing you've learned this week?

Speaker 17:

The best thing I've learned this week is there's no right way to do Agile. There's a lot of different ways you can do it. And so it's really about figuring out what the right process is for the organization you're in, and then leveraging those success patterns.

Tenille:

Well, I guess on that, is there one kind of Agile ceremony that you think your team can't do without?

Speaker 17:

The daily standup being daily. I think a lot of our teams, they talk all day long. They don't necessarily need to sync up that frequently. I've had a few teams already, they go down like three days a week and it seems to work for them. The other maybe key takeaway that I've seen folks do is time boxes. So no meetings from 10:00 to 2:00 or whatever it may be, and really driving that from a successful perspective.

Tenille:

I guess on that note, what do you think makes a really successful Agile team?

Speaker 17:

The ability to talk to each other, that ability to communicate. And so with all of our teams being either hybrid or remote, making sure that we have the tools that let them feel like they can just pick up and talk to somebody anytime they want, I think is key. And a lot of folks still don't have cameras, right, which is baffling to me. But that ability to see facial expressions, being face to face has been so nice because we're able to get that. So that's the other key is just that ability to talk to each other as though I could reach out and touch you.

Tenille:

Okay. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much.

Speaker 17:

You're welcome. Thank you.

Tenille:

Okay. Rob and Andrew, thanks so much for taking a few minutes with us. Can I start by asking you, what do you think is the best thing you learned this week?

Rob:

For me, it's definitely fast scaling Agile, we learned about this morning. We're going to try it.

Andrew:

For me, I really enjoyed the math programming session and learning kind of different ways to connect engineers and collaborate.

Tenille:

Great. Next up, I guess, what do you think makes a great Agile team?

Rob:

First and foremost, that they're in control of how they work and what they work on, more than anything else.

Andrew:

Yeah. For me, it's a obviously psychological safety and just having a good team dynamic where they can disagree, but still be respectful and come up with great ideas.

Tenille:

And is there one Agile ceremony that you think a great team can't live without?

Rob:

Probably retrospective. I think the teams need to always be improving, and that's a good way to do it.

Andrew:

Agreed. Yeah. Agreed.

Tenille:

Okay. That's great. Thanks so much for taking the time.

Andrew:

Thank so much. Appreciate it.