Fixing Your Quarterly Planning W Nigel Baker

Explicit content warning

01/11/24 • 55 min

Agile and Project Management - DrunkenPM Radio

There seems to be a current trend where organizations that say they are doing PI planning or quarterly planning are making a decision for the teams about what must be delivered in the time box. The teams just accept the commitment because they either feel they do not have the agency to push back and say no to some of it or are too busy trying to finish up their last overcommitment to look at new work. So, they begin the new time box already behind and then assess the new work only to (shockingly) learn it is too much. Then they divide it up by the number of Sprints or weeks and that is how they plan out how to get it all done. Most of the time this results in developing a habitual practice of carrying work from one sprint to the next, continually trying to recover from the last overcommitment so they can get to work on the new overcommitment. In this episode, The Agile Bear, Nigel Baker, joins me to sort through why this is happening, the harm it causes, and ways to fix it. Video Version If you'd prefer to view the video version of this interview: http://tinyurl.com/2eu5yucw Contacting Nigel Linktree: https://linktr.ee/nigelebaker

Previous Episode

Advice for a Wayward Scrum Master with Jeff Howey

What do you do when your Scrum Master’s understanding of their role seems to be less about acting as a servant leader to the Scrum Team and more about making the team to work in a way that is most convenient for them? In this episode of the podcast, Jeff Howey joins me to talk through the real-life case of a Scrum Master who seems to have lost their way. Here are some of the concerns shared in the podcast: - Dev Team is offshore and holds a Daily Scrum before 8 AM in Scrum Master’s time zone. Scrum Master requires that they hold a second Daily Scrum to provide status to Scrum Master. - SM does not attend Sprint Planning. They require the PO to run it. - SM requires the PO to run the Retrospective. All topics must be submitted in advance of the meeting and must be positive comments (not negative). - Scrum Master does not like the way the Developers have set up their Task Board and requires that they change it to a format that works better for the Scrum Master. During the conversation, Jeff and I unpack these and a number of additional concerns, talk through how they are out of alignment with Scrum and the role of the Scrum Master, and discuss suggestions we'd offer to help reset the understanding of what it means to be a Scrum Master who acts as a servant leader for a Scrum Team. If you’d like to contact Jeff Howey. LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeffhowey/ Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-agile-alchemist-7018992829091778560

Next Episode

Is This The Darkest Agile Timeline? w George Schlitz

With the state of Agile as it is today, I find myself frequently wondering, “Is this the Darkest Agile Timeline”? Things have been getting a bit bleak lately in the Agile space. With the layoffs, the job market, and the fact that the business world has change fatigue and is tired of not getting what they expected from a way of working they’ve mostly only kinda half-done... Where’s the hope? For this podcast (and to find some hope), I reached out to George Schlitz because 1. George is way smarter than me and sees things I can only vaguely sense the shape of, and 2. His new company Adaptivity Group has a mission statement that includes “an unquenchable thirst for ‘better’" and "a fearlessness about the unknown” that kinda smelled like hope to me. During this interview, George and I discuss whether or not this is the darkest timeline, what that means, how we got here, where we can find hope, and what we can do to make things more better-er and think that little old ant can move that rubber tree plant. If you aren’t familiar with The Darkest Timeline, in the show Community there was a storyline where a random occurrence created multiple parallel timelines. A roll of the dice created six possible ways things could have gone... basically a six-sided multiverse. And one of the parallels created is THE DARKEST TIMELINE. It’s basically the Lemony Snicket timeline of worst case scenario where Captain Kirk is sporting his Van Dyke beard, Thomas Wayne is Batman instead of Bruce Wayne, it rains all the time, you miss every bus, never made that play in the big game, never asked that person to the prom, never got that promotion... you get the idea. During the podcast, George references his blog post on "Addicted to More" blog posts which can be found here: https://www.adaptivitygroup.com/insights/addicted-to-more If you’d like to reach George you can find him here: Adaptivity Group:https://www.adaptivitygroup.com LinkedIn:http://linkedin.com/in/gschlitz