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The Trust Artist, Olaf Lewitz, along with his partner, Christine Neidhardt, are gearing ready for their upcoming TrustTemenos Certified Agile Leadership trainings. Certified Agile Leadership trainings are a new, advanced level of training classes being offered through the Scrum Alliance. In this interview Olaf and I discuss the reason for his TrustTemenos CAL class, how it can help people become better Agile leaders, and the value of Certified Agile Leadership.

Safety is a very hot topic in the Agile space right now. During our conversation about safety, Olaf shared one of the most powerful things I have heard during an interview this year: 

“When you talk to people about trust, it rises. When you talk to people about safety, they get scared.”

Every conversation I have with Olaf leaves me more aware and (I hope) a bit smarter than I was when it began. I hope you will get as much value from listening to this as I did from recording the conversation. 

And you can find links to Olaf’s upcoming classes and events, as well as his contact info, below the show notes.

Show Notes

00:07 Podcast Intro

01:27 Begins

01:57 An overview of Agile Leadership Training

04:48 A skeptical response to the idea of Agile Leadership Training and Olaf’s response

07:16 Developing a thinking model to understand what we need and how that drives our actions

09:11 The power of metaphor in leadership and Dave’s aversion to boats

11:03 Giving people tools to grow their awareness of how they show up

11:34 These classes cover advanced leadership topics - not the basics

12:16 “If you trust in yourself… you will still get beaten by people”

13:05 Skepticism is an important part of any class and any transition

13:32 It’s about being intentional and aware

15:23 There is a specific type of learning that involves being uncomfortable because what you believe is challenged

15:57 Extending the question of leadership beyond work and helping them understand more about their awareness and intention

17:00 Olaf shares a story about his first experience working as a boss

21:29 The advice Olaf about give his 29 year-old self about being a boss for the firs time

22:23 It’s okay to ask for help

24:05 A question about safety and what it means to create a safe space

25:42 When you talk to people about trust, it rises, when you talk to people about safety, they get scared

27:22 What is Certified Agile Leadership Training? What level of knowledge experience do you need to attend?

28:08 What will CAL training do for a leader/manager in an Agile organization?

29:28 Where to learn more about Olaf’s upcoming classes, where you can see him speak and how to get in touch with him if you have questions.

Links from the Podcast

Showing Up - the book written by Olaf and Christine https://leanpub.com/showingup

TrustTemenos Leadership Academy: https://trusttemenos.de

Upcoming CAL Trainings - https://trusttemenos.de/certified-agile-leadership-cal1/

Olaf’s session at the 2017 Scrum Gathering San Diego is called: Product Owner: Mapping Dramas and Dreams and it will be held in the Harbor Island 1 room on Monday, April 10 from 1 PM until 2:15 PM For more info on the Scrum Gathering: https://www.scrumalliance.org/sgcal

Contacting Olaf

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olaflewitz/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OlafLewitz

Website: http://trustartist.com

A few weeks ago Don Kim put up a blog post challenging the value of certifications. I reached out to Don in hopes of doing an interview about it and found out he’s also written a new book “I think Therefore I Plan”. In this interview we discuss the pros and cons of different certifications, taking an artisan approach to managing projects as well as Don’s new book.

You can find Don’s book here: http://amzn.to/2n7VEHu

You can find Don’s blog post about certifications here: http://bit.ly/2okDUZA

Show Notes:

00:07 Interview Start

00:30 What is a Human APEE

03:38 What is an Artisan approach to Project Management

05:15 Don’s Philosophy of Project Management

07:22 Trying to slow down and do less

08:21 Don explains his way of approaching project work and the reason for the book

10:56 How has the traditional vs. Agile debate changed over the past few years

12:53 Seeing the value in every project you work on  - regardless of how you got it

16:15 The downside of certifications

17:29 The positive aspects of certifications

18:03 There is more to project management training than just PMP certification

19:48 Making the case for the value certifications can provide and how it can be misunderstood

23:22 Does it make sense for people to want to have a way of gauging their professional achievement?

23:55 What Don expected from PMP certification and how he went deep with the Kerzner to get the most learning out of it (instead of just passing the test)

26:41 Is it the certification that is an issue, or the way people interpret it as an end point rather than a beginning

27:50 An overview of the approach Don’s book takes towards the art of Project Management

30:56 Where you can find Don’s book and how you can reach him with follow up questions

31:54 Podcast Ends

You can reach Don Kim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donkim/

Feedback/Comments: [email protected]

Peter Saddington, the founder of AgileScout.com, is an Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Trainer, Author, Entrepreneur and Scientist. On March 4, 2017 he put up a blog post on AgileScout.com announcing a new experiment he is running... on himself.  

Taking a step back from helping others adopt Agile, Peter is now using Agile to transform his life, and he's starting with his career. He's going from being a full time Agile Consultant to a full time professional video game player.  It might sound a bit insane, but his reasoning and research are sound. In this interview I got the chance to talk with Peter about his new experiment, why he's doing it and how he approaching transforming his life.

Click here to read Peter's manifesto: http://agilescout.com/time-for-change/
Click here to see Peter's video channel:  First15
Click here to follow Peter on Twitter
 

This podcast features an interview with two educators from Grandview Prep in Boca Raton, FL. Aileen Palmer and Susan Rose have been working with the Scrum Alliance, John Miller and Mike Vizdos to help the school implement Scrum for both the students and school administration. The interview explains how Scrum got started at Grandview, the impact it has had on the students, as well as the benefits and challenges they’ve experienced along the way.

Show Notes

01:16  Interview Begins

02:01 How Grandview Prep got interested in Scrum

04:59 Agile can be a lot easier for kids than adults

05:52 How Scrum has changed the way the students at Grandview collaborate

06:32 How the kids self-organize to make sure everyone is participating in the work

06:59 How teaching Scrum to a junior in high school impacts their ability to get work done and prepare for college

07:54 How visualizing the work is helping the students understand how to break work down into manageable pieces

08:35 Teaching students and teachers about how to break down the work and plan things out

10:20 Differences between how 1st graders and older kids are using Scrum at Grandview

11:17 The hardest parts of getting started with Scrum in school

13:17 Sometimes the transparency and seeing how much you have to do is overwhelming for adults

14:03 The struggle between Trello and Post-its

14:59 Student rankings and grading at Grandview - and how it has been impacted by Scrum

17:14 How using Scrum has improved the students and teachers ability to give and receive feedback

17:45 The reaction from parents/stakeholders to the introduction of Scrum at Grandview Prep

20:28 What Scrum means for the quiet kids who like to sit back and let others lead and drive the work

21:30 How will Grandview measure success to determine if/how Scrum is helping

22:33 The support Grandview Prep received from the Scrum Alliance 

23:14 Advice for educators who are interested in learning more or trying to implement it at their school 

24:39 How to get in touch with Susan and Aileen to learn more about Scrum at Grandview Prep

26:10 Wrap up

26:48 Podcast End

For more information:

Grandview Prep Info and Contacts

Grandview Prep
http://Grandviewprep.net

Aileen Palmer
[email protected] 

Susan Rose 
[email protected]

Scrum Alliance Info and Contacts

Scrum Alliance
https://www.scrumalliance.org/

John Miller
[email protected]

Mike Vizdos
http://www.michaelvizdos.com/

Heather Leigh
[email protected]

In this special video podcast, FocusedObjective’s Troy Magennis provides a walk through of two important tools that can help you in understanding the impact of trying to inject work into your team’s backlog and in forecasting how much work your teams can achieve within a certain time frame.

Forecasting Tools Based on Team Performance with Troy Magennis from Dave Prior on Vimeo.

In the first part of the video, Troy presented the Multiple Feature Cut Line Forecaster. When people in your organization start trying to add work into a team’s workflow, this tool will help you understand the impact of the added work and help you assess the impact of reprioritizing the work to deal with the additional work. If you need a way of showing management how their new requests are going to negatively impact your team’s ability to deliver, or if you just want to help them make smarter choices about what work they are adding to your plate, the walk thru presents a simple explanation of how this tool can be used to help your organization make smarter choices.

In the second part of the video (12:30), Troy presents the Multiple Team Forecaster. This tool will allow you to use historical data from multiple teams in your organization to understand their throughput, even though they are sizing and estimating work in completely different ways. This is especially valuable if you are working in an organization where you have multiple teams and you are considering standardizing their estimation process so that you can get a better sense of how they are doing with delivering work across the portfolio. You do not have to standardize on a specific method of estimation - let the teams do what they do. Using this tool you can look at how each team is delivering, based on historical data, to get a better sense of their ability to deliver a certain amount of work within a given time frame. 

Troy makes these and a number of other incredibly valuable tools free to the public. You can find them by going to http://focusedobjective.com or http://bit.ly/SimResources.

If you’d like to learn more about the tools Troy has created, you can contact him via his website above, follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/t_magennis  or you can see him present them in person. He is going to be holding a workshop on Forecasting Using Data in Austin, TX on November 17. You can find information about this event here: http://forecastingusingdata.eventbrite.com

He will also be appearing at a few local user group events:

Lean Kanban Meetup  - November 17 - https://www.meetup.com/leankanbanaustin/events/235274658/

Agile at Scale User Group meet up - November 18 - http://www.meetup.com/AgileAustin/events/235207828/?gj=co2&rv=co2