Ep. 36 | On The Kanban Method And Other Agile Practices with Matt Philip
02/17/22 • 21 min
HIGHLIGHTS
- A lifetime of learning
- What is Kanban?
- The Kanban Iceberg: it's not just about sign cards
- Explaining Flow
- What does a flow manager do?
- Measuring Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)
- The Agile Manifesto
- How to coach a team on XP (Extreme Programming)
- On Service Delivery Review
- Measuring outcome vs output
QUOTES
Matt: "It's been really nice to see how different people are doing things and learning from other people and different places and pick up bits and pieces. For me, an agile mindset is one of learning and so picking up bits and pieces where people are doing some interesting things, trying interesting things, and that's what I've just done. Very little of what I've done is my own novel idea. It's really just incorporating other people's ideas and making it work."
Matt: "Kanban helps us to see how our work works. It's really making visible the work systems that we work in."
Matt: In knowledge work, where we are in, intangible goods, it's harder to see the work. It's stuff that lives in our computers and in the cloud, and so it's not quite as transparent and visible as in a physical goods environment.
Matt: "It's a way of, I talk about humanizing work. For me, seeing how actual people were doing work can be overburdened and stressed out by having too much work to work on, or not having a visibility into how things are working. And so it's about the work's sake, but also the worker's sake that I really find Kanban to be a helpful way of thinking really about our work."
Matt: "The Kanban Iceberg metaphor that I've used in the past is, that which is seen at the top of the iceberg, which is the sign cards or the cork boards. But there's so much of the Kanban method that's below the surface. Not quite as easily seen. I think about the other practices, the principles, and the values."
Matt: "In my experience, I've experienced lots of different places that say Agile and do Agile. My very first experience was doing XP extreme programming orientation. My main experience is initially doing Agile stuff from an XP standpoint. For me that's really valuable because I understood the importance of engineering excellence and technical excellence as opposed to just the organizing principles of some methods that are useful but don't necessarily speak to what code looks like and what deliverable work should look like."
Matt: "Make it okay to fail. We talk a lot about psychological safety. Making it clear that it’s okay that you're not gonna get it right the first time. And being resilient in that experience and to learn from those things."
Matt: "If doing something fast is important, there's tradeoffs obviously, maybe the quality suffers but sometimes the customer's okay with that. It takes a very important conversation to make them aware of the implications of taking some shortcuts with code. But one of the things that I find useful, for example, is predictability. Being able to be predictable in delivery, to the extent that we have control over some of these sources of variation and impact."
Learn more about Matt in the link below:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewphilip/
- Website: http://mattphilip.wordpress.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattphilip
HIGHLIGHTS
- A lifetime of learning
- What is Kanban?
- The Kanban Iceberg: it's not just about sign cards
- Explaining Flow
- What does a flow manager do?
- Measuring Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)
- The Agile Manifesto
- How to coach a team on XP (Extreme Programming)
- On Service Delivery Review
- Measuring outcome vs output
QUOTES
Matt: "It's been really nice to see how different people are doing things and learning from other people and different places and pick up bits and pieces. For me, an agile mindset is one of learning and so picking up bits and pieces where people are doing some interesting things, trying interesting things, and that's what I've just done. Very little of what I've done is my own novel idea. It's really just incorporating other people's ideas and making it work."
Matt: "Kanban helps us to see how our work works. It's really making visible the work systems that we work in."
Matt: In knowledge work, where we are in, intangible goods, it's harder to see the work. It's stuff that lives in our computers and in the cloud, and so it's not quite as transparent and visible as in a physical goods environment.
Matt: "It's a way of, I talk about humanizing work. For me, seeing how actual people were doing work can be overburdened and stressed out by having too much work to work on, or not having a visibility into how things are working. And so it's about the work's sake, but also the worker's sake that I really find Kanban to be a helpful way of thinking really about our work."
Matt: "The Kanban Iceberg metaphor that I've used in the past is, that which is seen at the top of the iceberg, which is the sign cards or the cork boards. But there's so much of the Kanban method that's below the surface. Not quite as easily seen. I think about the other practices, the principles, and the values."
Matt: "In my experience, I've experienced lots of different places that say Agile and do Agile. My very first experience was doing XP extreme programming orientation. My main experience is initially doing Agile stuff from an XP standpoint. For me that's really valuable because I understood the importance of engineering excellence and technical excellence as opposed to just the organizing principles of some methods that are useful but don't necessarily speak to what code looks like and what deliverable work should look like."
Matt: "Make it okay to fail. We talk a lot about psychological safety. Making it clear that it’s okay that you're not gonna get it right the first time. And being resilient in that experience and to learn from those things."
Matt: "If doing something fast is important, there's tradeoffs obviously, maybe the quality suffers but sometimes the customer's okay with that. It takes a very important conversation to make them aware of the implications of taking some shortcuts with code. But one of the things that I find useful, for example, is predictability. Being able to be predictable in delivery, to the extent that we have control over some of these sources of variation and impact."
Learn more about Matt in the link below:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewphilip/
- Website: http://mattphilip.wordpress.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattphilip
Previous Episode
Ep. 35 | Conducting a Great Retrospective (Best Interview Moments)
In today's episode, we take a look back at some of our favorite tips we've received from our guests about how to conduct a great retrospective. Topics to be discussed include the five steps of a retro, meeting facilitation and making retrospectives fun.
Featuring clips from the following episodes (in order of appearance):
Ep. 16 | Agile Team Retrospectives (ft. Meghann Rudolph) Ep. 18 | Inspiration Behind Writing Agile Retrospectives (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 1: Setting the Stage (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 2: Gathering Data (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 3: Gathering Insight (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 4: Deciding What to Do (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 18 | Step 5: Closing the Retrospective (ft. Diana Larson) Ep. 1 | What is Meeting Facilitation? (ft. Joe Ziadeh) Ep. 14 | Making a Retrospective Fun, Engaging & Effective (ft. Adam Miner)
Next Episode
Ep. 37 | Life And Work As A Scrum Master And Agile Coach with Laxmi Khanal
HIGHLIGHTS
- Working as a scrum master in Mayo Clinic and acquiring an Agile mindset
- Empower your team by not making them excessively reliant on you
- Learn how to ask the right questions, then ask some more
- How to create transparency in your team
- Working with leader to develop an agile mindset
- Handling a difficult member in the team
- What is the biggest hurdle to success?
- Good leadership is largely about building good rapport with co-workers
- How to be an effective facilitator
- Don't be afraid to change things up if you're not achieving the desired outcome
- How to make retrospectives fun, engaging, and productive
QUOTES
Laxmi: "I don't find myself needing to jump in to fix things for my team. In the past, when I work with teams, I used to find myself in a situation that I'm sure a lot of scrum masters out there have felt this way at some point in their careers, where in the process of being helpful, you kinda create this need for your team to become excessively reliant on you."
Laxmi: "Allow the team to learn by doing something poorly. Let them have a bad daily scrum. We humans, I think, learn when we make mistakes. That's how I learn."
Laxmi: "First, it's really helping the team understand what we're tying to get out of by visualizing our work. What is the reason behind transparency."
Pabitra: "So it's not, you're not shoving and pushing, you're not a dictator. You're not saying, hey, like do this or do that. But you're really helping them come up with your own like ways in a way and saying, Hey, you know, I see like what you're doing here and that provides value, but here is like also by not having this in place, there's this here's what's causing us or here's the problem that's causing."
Laxmi: You really want to build out a one-to-one relationship and coach them a little to find out what is getting in the way of them being a better team member, right. What is that internal dialogue? And the biggest thing is you have to be open to the experiences of that person, without any judgment."
Laxmi: "I firmly believe our style and personality obviously plays an important role in our ability to effectively facilitate. However, as a scrum master, you shouldn't just subscribe to one way of facilitating team events. Yeah. So just like, you know, you're advocating to the team that, Hey, there is more than one way to achieve the same outcome. You also have to believe that there is more than one way to hold, for example, a daily scrum. If your team is still asking the same three questions, what did I work on yesterday, What am I working on today? What is progressing in my work? Then I believe you're just going through the motions and most likely, so is your team."
Laxmi: "As a facilitator, you have to create an environment for the team to perform at their best. And if you're not experimenting with your technique and, you know, doing what's necessary to provide, the setting that's needed, where the team can reflect, they can discuss and have fun, I don't think you're growing as a scrum master or caring enough to bring them, bring the group together."
Learn more about Laxmi in the link below:
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