Anytime I can combine worlds I love it. I’m a gamer and love EDM and Agile. When agile and gaming come up together, I’m there. In this case, I was thrilled to see League of Legends creator Riot Games had two men giving a great speech about creating the KDA Popstars, a fictional band created of LoL characters, that destroyed the charts last year.
Came away with the idea of summiting a mountain – Camp “n” model, shown below:
Teams that are built around them with the goal of getting them not necessarily to the top, which can be the decade away, but to the next camp.
The mindset shift is from protecting the company from its crazy employee ideas, but how to do we enable it, and place guard rails so they don’t kill themselves. KDA was a coalition of the unwilling. They were able to blow through legal work in six months. They leveraged the BAI framework as a guide but only loosely.
It’s not transactional – innovation is not transactional. These are long plays. Agility requires craft excellence that continually improves over time, is the most impactful to creating value. Try and experiment and learn. This is at the heart of it. What does it take to focus on the customer? We are player focused? What struck me is that you grow abilities long before there is an ROI on it. This is the key. This quote is a key takeaway: “The customer is always moving. So saying that we’re customer-focused is to say that we are always moving. This is why we need to be agile.
Fishbowl on Agile coaching – 2-3:15 Shane Hastie and Evan Laybourn
Interesting experience with this one. People would get up and enter a circle with some coaches. Agile practices may not work in things that are not technology directly. So, the mindset could travel to finance for example, but not the practices.
Interesting question about the younger generations coming into agile, which I thought was good. I don’t see the troubles coming from the younger generation but the older ones. Keeping a growth mindset is very important to teach.
-> Look at 13 characteristics of Agile? Couldn’t find it? Evan has a book that sounds interesting.
-> Agile Manifesto for HR? Gotta look that up.
Talk to HR about the things that get in their way and what about the agile mindset applies? We need to solve their problems, not impose our frameworks, processes, and practices.
A lot of transformations fail because of the top changes. We have to affect the board. The board is the furthest away from the customer. Is agility entering the boardroom? Need to look at this model…. the second time I’ve seen it. MBA’s are still aligned with the old school. Get in front of these MBAs, or training orgs to bring agility and growth mindset from day one.
Love this: what are the new management styles needed for this new, always moving, customer? What about value streams – they are better at it than silos. Brand loyalty is weaker than ever before. The conversation pulled out the data that we need to watch how the awards of a system are given out, e.g. salespeople rewarded for sales, rather than customer satisfaction. He didn’t succeed where he was because he didn’t have top-down support. Watch out for local-maxima – when a transformation gets you to a place. We do SAFE, we do Scrum, then LESS, repeat. It’s okay! just get them moving to that next place. It was a good talk! business agility institute is where to find more.
Facilitating Distributed Teams – Mark Kilby
Super excited about this one since I’ve been coaching a fully distributed team for over a year now. He’s an excellent presenter, and I love that he’s run against the Agile establishment regarding co-location. My thoughts are his – distribution is not our idea…but we’re gonna have to deal with them. I love the way he used Mentimeter during the entire pitch. Seamless, and added to the presentation. It’s quite a tool! Below are my random stream-of-consciousness notes:
Open space works with distributed teams and that way you don’t have to be at everything! Teams own their collaboration.
Meetings are a bit more fluid – Connection and Collaboration. Allow for connection!
What can I do about timezones? – 4-5 hours to collaborate per day. We don’t have that. It’s better if you use Kanban or at least a value stream if you have less. Scrum is very difficult in this situation.
Three types of work arrangments:
- Satellites – one person
- Clusters – groups of people in locations
- Nebulas – everyone working remotely buffer, WordPress, etc. This is becoming more common.
Three approaches :
Backchannel – all frequencies open. What do they use? What’s working? KEEP IT. Update presentation about tools! slack and teams as a backchannel. invite the teams to look out for each other. In the meeting, chat tools are bad because the questions are lost. Backchannel can be used for a backup for online meetings. Zoom and backup google meetings. Reminder about retro safe checks.
Buddy system – each remote person has a buddy in the main location. So, if there are a few people in the call of a mostly in-person meeting, have a representative.
Co-pilots – someone who can help you facilitate the whole team meeting. Facilitation (equal ) pairing
Host and Producer (handles logistics) . This requires a little upfront planning. Add the steve”backup facilitator” note in my story.
Where the Action is – J. Elise Keith . Book reference – human connection and focus on the work product
Have a Plan B (and maybe C)
Goal or process not right?
Technical issues
You as a facilitator have an unexpected event
How to read the room?
- I need instruments! I’m in a capsule!
- Meeting checkin
- Account for different styles – Introvert, extrovert. Introverts like to type more than not.
- Build your own cockpit – Multiple channels always.
- The question is map all five senses into the virtual space?
- Combine async and sync.
Try new tech! Collaboration tools change monthly! Keep up.
Choose one thing to try of the list we learned.
One on one videos when you start.
Take away – try the open space with them, do the facilitation book, and the control panel approach.
