This experience based exercise is designed to help participants understand the value of continuous rebuild to avoid creating technical- or user experience debt.
At Dandy People we use a lot of Experience Based Games, so called Serious Games, and Simulations to enable quick learnings. We have created many different ones that you can find within this category (same as this post) here on our blog.
This specific game that we present here is created to enable critical understanding of the value of continous rebuild to not build technical, and other, debt. Debt does not only exists within code, but also within the user experience, therefore the parts of the customer experience also often need to be continously updated as new parts are added.
When transitioning to more agile, customer-focused ways of working, aiming to reduce lead times and increase customer and business value—commonly referred to as a product-led organization.
The game consists of two rounds and takes approximately 30 minutes to complete, excluding time for reflection and theoretical discussion.
The image above shows the team playing the game. The team self-organizes how they want to approach the task. In the first round, they play based on the principle “What’s done is done”—but in the second round, they are allowed to continuously adjust the order of the piles. This simulates continuously improving what has already been done, such as code or design.
Preparation
Print the cards with the numbers and cut them out.
Use slightly thicker paper for easier handling, but avoid making it too thick.
Each team needs:
One deck of cards.
One game board.
Creating the Game Board
Use thick marker lines to draw an area where the cards can be placed.
Label the center with “Game Board.”
Ensure the board is large enough to fit 5 cards wide and 2 cards tall. Avoid making it larger, as it will make the game too easy.
The idea of the organization as a machine is a metaphor that was common 150 years ago, but many people are experiencing it right now too. This is common when what is asked for, and celebrated, is output oriented. Like, for instance, the number of “things” being delivered is counted, reported and the goal is “met” when the ”right” number of features has been shipped. What seems to be lost in theese organizations is the purpose of the organization. What is the actual customer- and business value that the organization should aim to deliver to be successful?
The actual purpose of the organization
The purpose of an organization is of course never to do a specific number of things, or to meet the numbers in budget but to deliver some kind of value to its customers. If you are a bank, maybe the value is making your customers housing dreams come true. And if you are in health care, maybe it is something like helping people live healthy lives longer – and helping those sick to become well faster. Today the trick is to understand this purpose and explore as quickly as possible what solutions would do the customer job-to-be-done they came to you for – as well as give the business vale you are looking for, with a feasable technical solution. To be able to do so we need to use hypothesis driven development, test things, throw them away and try new things. And this is often impossible to plan and co-ordinate if you are not working closely together.
Sadly, it seems the main focus for many Agile transformations have been to decrease costs, or become more efficient in “IT”. Many would start by increasing the flow of the organization – which is totally fine, that is always the “first step” and to increase the speed of delivery to actually get something out to the customer. But after that, there should always be a focus on value. Delivering the right thing fast is what we should be looking for. To do so almost always you need to bring several parts of the organization together into one new organization. Often marketing, business, tech and others are needed to make the required shift to reduce “the cost in IT”. If this doesn’t happen, you might become really slow, or delivering the wrong things fast – making you a feature factory.
Mia gästar i detta avsnitt TealPodden där hon lyfter problemen kring bristande incitament för samarbete som leder till att organisationer idag har svårt att leverera strategiskt. Hon ger här tips om hur vi kan ta bort hinder för samarbete så att organisationer istället kan leverera det organisationen ska uppnå. Hon berättar också om begreppet Beyond budgeting som genom 6 olika processer och principer hjälper oss att hantera VUCA.
Den snabba takten i affärsvärlden medför stora utmaningar, både i ledarskap och organisationers förmåga att möta de nya kraven. Dandy People har länge framgångsrikt hjälpt organisationer att ställa om för att bli snabbrörliga och kundcentrerade. Nu startas ett nytt bolag för att förse företag med chefer och ledare med de ledarförmågor som behövs för att dagens organisationer ska vara framgångsrika.
I dagarna släppte organisationen Techsverige en rapport som lyfte det ökade behovet av nya specialister inom tech. Men för att en organisation framgångsrikt ska kunna möta nutidens krav måste hela organisationen ställa om. Och detta ställer höga, och många gånger helt nya, krav på chefer och ledare.
”De stora utmaningar vi ser i de flesta organisationer idag bottnar i problem kring organisationen och ledarskapet”. För att kunna möta och hantera den tekniska utvecklingen behöver arbetet ofta ske på tvären i dagens organisationer, där medarbetarna tar fram lösningar tillsammans för att man ska lyckas. Det är här de stora förändringarna behöver göras för att öka det faktiska värdet som organisationen behöver leverera. “Vi kan inte bara tillsätta nya specialister, hela systemet behöver förändras för att fungera på ett bättre sätt,” berättar Mia Kolmodin, VD och grundare av Dandy People.
This is a translation of a prior post in Swedish. Se originalinlägget på svenska här >
This post is about the most common way of working for an agile team, namely the Scrum framework. Scrum is a minimal, lightweight framework that gives good support for both new teams and more experienced teams, as well as for organisations with many teams, under the name Scrum at Scale. In this post I show the basics of Scrum, but if you are interested to know more and get the latest correct updates, I recommend the official Scrum Guide >
Scrum is based on empiricism and lean thinking. It provides good support to deliver solutions to complex problems where we cannot predict whether the solution will produce the effect we want. It has become by far the most popular Agile way of working over the past 20 years.
The team can work within software development, product development, or as managers in any sort of organisation. Even functions like HR can benefit greatly from this way of working, or why not healthcare or construction projects? Anyone who works with complex problems where they cannot predict if the solution will achieve the desired result, and cannot plan more than one week in advance, will benefit from working this way of working.
The 5 Scrum values give the team the conditions needed to build a high performing team. If these values are not lived by the team, they will not be able to build and maintain an Agile approach either. Process alone will not bring a team all the way to agility.
Focus All in the Agile team focus on the work in the sprint or the goal for the team.
Courage Agile team members have the courage to do the right thing and work to solve tough problems.
Openness The Agile team and its stakeholders agree to be transparent with all work and challenges that come with doing it.
Commitment Individuals in the Agile team personally commit to achieve their shared goal as a team.
Respect The members in the Agile team respect each other and have trust that all are capable, independent people.
Agile way of working for teams
The process is simple and has few elements and rules, as well as only 3 roles; Product Owner, Scrum Master and Team Member. Regardless of what the team is working on, these roles are used, but depending on what the team’s mission is, the team members have different competencies (more on that below).
Product Owner Responsible for optimising value that the team and organisation deliver. Owns the product backlog, product vision, and has the mandate to make business decisions. NOT a project manager.
Scrum Master A coaching leader for the team and PO. Responsible for facilitating work processes and optimising flow in the team. Helps the team to improve and build a mature and strong team. NOT managing anyone.
Team Members A self-organising team is responsible for “the what” – i.e. the solution. The team works together with the PO to understand the business and customer value and is responsible for how the solution will work to solve the prioritised problem. NOT with individual goals and priorities.
Interview with Mia Kolmodin for the #video edition of Who is #agile (#WIa079)
Yves Hanoulle has been making interviews with Agilists during the past 11 years. Up until last year as books https://leanpub.com/WhoIsAgile with six local country versions. Last year he took it to the next level and started to do video interviews instead. He published 52 videos during the first year. This summer in the beginning of July it was my turn to be interviewed.
The way Yves gets his candidates for upcoming videos is by recommendation from previous interviewees, and I was invited by Mina Boström Nakicenovic ✈️ & Gustav Boström.
The headline for our talk is “The Challenge to relax”, which was on my mind at this time just before vacation.
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile Leadership in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in German! Thank you so much Thomas Seeliger for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
This is a very special translation made by Thomas Seeliger, the principal of a mid-sized school in Germany and his leadership team 🇩🇪 they are trying to transform their school leadership team to agile leadership.
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile Leadership in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in German! Thank you so much Thomas Seeliger for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share The Agile Hybrid Team in a Nutshell with you for free also in Spanish! Thank you so much Francisco Cordero Rosado for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
Att skapa en ny organisation från en gammal handlar till stor del om att reda ut och förstå vad som tillhör var. Om du har gjort det tidigare kan du se mönster som är till hjälp. Att använda visualisering och att arbeta på ett strukturerat sätt, steg för steg och involvera människorna är några hjälpsamma sätt att arbeta på.
Precis som alltid i den komplexa domänen är det bättre att inte använda sig av goda praxis (samma lösning som andra). Genom att gå tillväga experimentellt, steg för steg, kan du säkrare hitta bra lösningar baserat på designprinciper och mönster.
När du tänker på det kanske du inser att det faktiskt är ganska likt att bygga fantastiska produkter som kunder älskar – baserat på ett äldre system. Så varför inte använda liknande arbetssätt?
När vi börjar behöver vi se vad vi har för närvarande, och även det är en komplex strävan. För att få en gemensam bild av den nuvarande organisationen kan du använda olika tekniker, och vanligtvis behövs en bra mix. I detta inlägg kommer vi att titta på hur du kan kartlägga nuvarande team, produkter och kundresor, samt systemens tillstånd och börja se vilka team som kanske tar ansvar för vad, i en steg-för-steg-approach.
Produkter och tjänster
Som en start kan du börja tillsammans att kartlägga de produkter som dina kunder betalar för. Det är det vi vanligtvis kallar produkter i en agil organisation. Det är där någon form av pengar utbyts, och om det sker på månatlig basis så kan det vara en tjänst.
Nedan ser du ett exempel på de övergripande produkterna och tjänsterna som är kartlagda, både för B2B och B2C. Det finns ingen anledning att göra det mer avancerat än så här. Om du senare förstår att du faktiskt har fler produkter, kan du enkelt lägga till dem om du skapar ett skalbart system.
Står du inför en digitalisering? Är ni måna om att varje investerad krona inom IT skall ge den effekt ni är ute efter? Drömmer du om att få Agila team som samarbetar över verksamhetsgränser och drar åt samma håll? Då är det här seminariet något för dig!
Webinaret har två olika delar, vi gick först genom arbetssätt och exempel på organisationer som har digitalisera effektdrivet genom att upphandla via Agila kontrakt med Mia Kolmodin och Mattias Skarin. Sedan presentarade Jonas Södeström sina tankar och metoder för att säkerställa att man faktiskt skapar den effekten man är ute efter via sina kunder när man digitaliserar.
Över 150 personer deltog i detta mycket populära webinar där vi presenterade vår nya poster “Inre motivation i ett nötskal”. Mia Kolmodin, Desirée Rova och Frida Mangen berättade också mer om skillnaden mellan yttre och inre motivation och hur det påverkar oss både i vårt vardagliga liv men också yrkesmässigt. Det var ett superkul event med massor av intressanta diskussioner och frågor.
Nu kan du se inspelningen i efterhand här ifall du missade den.
Passa också på att ladda ner postern om du inte redan gjort det, den är fri att använda och dela 🙂
Organisationer är komplexa adaptiva system, vilket innebär att vi inte med precision kan förutse alla möjliga effekter som en förändring av en del av organisationen kommer att ha på en annan. Och vi kan inte förutse hur organisationen kommer att utvecklas i framtiden och vilka strategier som kommer att dyka upp. Framgång kräver därför att vi gör små kontinuerliga förändringar som en naturlig del av att driva verksamheten, men utifrån gemensamma principer.
Att ha en tydlig förståelse för hur organisationen fungerar i nuläget ur olika perspektiv är avgörande när man går från traditionella till mer agila strukturer och arbetssätt. Ett sätt att göra en organisationsanalys ur olika perspektiv och även belysa vad som håller tillbaka den och vad som kan göras för att föra den framåt.
Dandy People har skapat en organisationsanalysmodell vi kallar 9-dimensionsmodellen för organisationsförändring (TM) som ger ett helhetsperspektiv och kopplar samman nuläge, önskat läge och vad som håller organisationen tillbaka – över hela organisationen. Detta är det bästa sättet vi har hittat hittills, att skapa och upprätthålla en lärande organisation. Modellen är baserad på 6-boxmodellen av Carl Binder.
Kulturen skapas av våra beteenden i alla andra dimensioner
Här ovan så ser ni alla de olika dimensionerna vi tittar på i modellen. Anledningen till att kultur placeras “utanför cirkeln” i vår illustration beror på att kulturen skapas av de beteenden vi har i de andra dimensionerna. Den yttre miljön omger oss och kommer att påverka oss, vilket är anledningen till att den representeras med pilar som flödar in och ut ur systemet.
Den 9-dimensionella modellen för organisationsförändring (TM) möjliggör förändring över hela organisationen och leder till kontinuerliga förbättringar med mindre känsla av kaos.
Genom att skapa ett strategiskt transformationsteam som arbetar med de olika dimensionerna kan de stötta förändringsinitiativ på ett agilt sätt.
När vi använder 9-dimensionsmodellen som en delad modell över avdelningar och/eller värdeströmmar kan vi skala och transformera snabbare än med den traditionella top-down managementstilen. Vi får gemensam fart framåt och fler kan vara delaktiga och driva förändringen i det dagliga jobbet.
Det övergripande flödet av den 9-dimensionella modellen för organisationsförändringar (TM)
Svenska företag och myndigheter har haft digitaliseringen högt på den strategiska agendan sedan länge. Tyvärr är det få som faktiskt lyckas skapa den lönsamhetsökning som man hade hoppats på med sin digitaliseringssatsning.
*Enligt Standish group misslyckas dock hela 91% av alla digitaliseringsprojekt. Inte nog med att de misslyckas, de missar också att skapa den avkastning som investeringen förutsatte. Det är alltså majoriteten av alla som startas, hur kan det vara så? Varför är det så svårt?
Viljan finns – men också en känsla av frustration och stress
Vi ser ofta en stark vilja att göra ett bra jobb och nyfikenhet hos ledare och chefer i ledningsgrupper. Men även ofta en känsla av frustration av tröghet i förändring, svårigheter i samarbeten med andra områden i organisationen och en oro i hur man ska lyckas leverera på sina mål när man har så starka beroenden till andra, begränsade resurser och tidspress. Det här leder till en känsla av panik, stress och ofta trötthet när man misslyckas om och om igen. Tilltron undermineras av tidigare misslyckanden vilket påverkar framtida projekt negativt. Rädslan att missa tillfället i kombination med bristande kunskap om användbar teknologi, styrning och organisation skapar en digitaliseringshets. Digitaliseringen blir målet istället för medlet att göra något nytt och bättre.
En övergripande strategi behövs – och en ny operativ modell
Faktum är att en övergripande strategi för hela organisationen som tar hänsyn till helheten behövs, och det är ofta svårt att skapa. Strategin behöver dessutom vara känd av alla i företaget för att ge effekt, och inga andra strategier som inte hänger ihop med denna kan pågå samtidigt eftersom de då motverkar varandra.
Stress blockerar de vägar i hjärnan som måste vara öppna för effektivt agerande, beslutsfattande och lärande.
I ett kunskapsintensivt arbetsliv måste vi vara försiktiga med att öka pressen så att det inte övergår i stress. Det är kontraproduktivt eftersom det minskar den intellektuella kapacitet som vi behöver så mycket som möjligt för att samarbeta, lösa problem och lära oss nytt.
Det betyder att ledarskapet måste vara en fristad för utveckling och prestation, inte en källa till stress.
Det som är press för en person kan vara stress för en annan, och vem som upplever det mest varierar över tid och mellan olika situationer.
Stress är kroppens reaktion på krav av olika slag. Det är en adaption och en försvarsmekanism som initialt är positiv eftersom den förbereder oss på kamp eller flykt. Men det är skadligt i längden om det blir för starkt eller pågår för länge.
Vi behöver hela tiden arbeta för att skapa psykologisk trygghet av respekt för individerna så att de kan utnyttja sin fulla potential som de har rekryterats för. Allt annat är rent slöseri med intellektuell kapacitet ur ett affärsperspektiv.
Stresskonen är ett sätt att visualisera hur stress påverkar tillgången till vår egen hjärna. Den visar relationen mellan stress och tillgång till intellektet.
Den här postern handlar om det vanligaste arbetssätet för Agila team, nämligen ramverket Scrum. Scrum är ett minimalt, lättviktigt ramverk som ger gott stöd för både nya team och mer erfarna team samt även för organisationer med många team, då under namnet Scrum at Scale. I den här postern visar jag grunderna i Scrum, men om du är intresserad av att veta mer och få den senaste korrekta uppdateringen så rekommenderar jag den officiella Scrumguiden >
Scrum bygger på empiriskt och lean tänkande och ger ett mycket gott stöd i att leverera lösningar på komplexa problem där vi inte i förväg kan förutse om lösningen ger den effekt vi vill ha. Det har blivit det absolut mest populära Agila arbetssättet under de senaste 20 åren.
Teamet kan arbeta inom mjukvaruutveckling, produktutveckling eller som chefer i vilken organisation som helst. Även funktioner som HR har stor nytta av detta, eller varför inte inom vården eller i byggprojekt? Alla som arbetar med något komplext där man inte kan förutse vilken lösning som ger det önskade resultatet och där man kan planera åtminstone 1 vecka framåt har nytta av detta.
De 5 värderingarna i Scrum ger teamet de förutsättningar som behövs att bygga ett högpresterande team. Om dessa inte efterlevs i teamet så kommer teamet inte heller kunna bygga ett Agilt förhållningssätt. Enbart processen i sig kommer inte att ta teamet hela vägen.
Fokus Alla i det Agila teamet fokuserar på arbetet i sprinten eller målet för teamet.
Mod Agile team-medlemmar har modet att göra rätt sak och arbetar på att lösa tuffa problem.
Öppenhet Det Agila teamet och dess intressenter kommer överens om att vara öppna med allt arbete och utmaningar med att utföra det.
Åtagande Individer i det Agila teamet åtar sig personligen att nå målet som ett agilt team.
Respekt Medlemmarna i det Agila teamet respekterar varandra och har tilltro till att var och en är kapabel, självständiga människor.
Agila arbetssätt för team
Processen är enkel och har ett fåtal element och regler, samt endast 3 roller; Produktägare, Scrum Master och Teammedlem. Oavsett vad teamet arbetar med så är det dessa roller som används men beroende på vad teamets uppdrag är så har teammedlemmarna olika förmågor (mer om det nedan).
Produktägare Ansvarig för att optimera värdet teamet och organisationen levererar. Äger produkt backlogen, visionen för produkten och har mandat att ta affärsbeslut. INTE en projektledare.
Scrum Master En coachande ledare för team och Produktägare. Ansvarig för att facilitera arbetsprocessen och optimera flödet i teamet. Hjälper teamet att förbättra och bygga mogna och starka team.
Teammedlemmar Ett självorganiserande team är ansvariga för “vadet” – dvs lösningen. Teamet består av olika experter som arbetar tillsammans med Produktägaren för att förstå värdet för affären, verksamheten och kunderna och ansvarar för hur lösningen ska fungera för att lösa prioriterade problem.
We are so happy to be able to share The Agile Hybrid Team in a Nutshell with you for free also in French! Thank you so much Isabelle Gerard for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
Motivation är ett begrepp som många gånger är missförstått då det är lätt att blanda ihop inre och yttre motivation. Med den här postern vill vi förklarar det viktigaste du behöver veta om motivation så att fler kan ha bra dialoger med varandra kring vad inre motivation handlar om.
Läs mer om alla posterns olika delar här nedan, och ladda ner och använda postern gratis i PDF-format.
När vi tänker på motivation associeras det oftast med det som kallas för yttre motivation, dvs. det vi brukar sammanfatta med morot och piska. I en organisation brukar det översättas till bonusar, förmåner eller titlar. Inre motivation handlar mer om det lustfyllda, det vi får energi av och det som håller oss motiverade över tid. Engagemang handlar mer om inställning och beteende, det har inget med inre motivation att göra.
Yttre motivation är ofta lön, bonus, förmåner och kanske titlar, och forskning visar att det inte är ett hållbart sätt. Inre motivation leder till bättre prestation vid all typ av beslutsfattning, speciellt i en komplexa frågor. Yttre motivation minskar den psykologiska tryggheten, vilket leder till sämre förmåga att innovera. En annan viktig slutsats är att inre och yttre motivation inte är positivt kopplade till varandra. Tvärtom rapporterar tre studier ett negativt samband; när den yttre motivationen är hög är den inre motivationen låg. Därför är det viktigt att fokuserar på den inre motivationen då det ger mest effekt.
MyNeeds har vidareutvecklat Self Determination Theory (SDT) tre psykologiska behov till att bli sex psykologiska behov. SDT har sedan 80-talet varit den mest etablerade motivationsforskningen i världen och är än idag aktuell. MyNeeds forskning har pågått sedan 2011 och har tillämpats inom näringslivet sedan dess. Förutom att titta på den individuella motivationen har MyNeeds även kartlagt vad det betyder för grupper och organisationer utifrån komplex systemteori.
One of the conditions of a Team is continuous coaching. This is to enable the team to become high-performing and well functioning. Without putting time and effort into team coaching it is very hard to become high-performing as a team, and most teams need experts to support in the beginning to move beyond friction and into the phase of the structure.
The 5 Stages of a Team
1. Inclusion
The team meets and learns about the work that needs to be done and what’s expected of them. Members avoid disagreement because they fear rejection at this stage, making the leader a central role providing direction. There is a desire for order, roles, and structure.
The need of the team: All team members understand the purpose of the team and want to be part of it. Team members know and accept each other and feel accepted as a member of the team.
The leaders role: Provide structure. Make sure everyone is included. Initiate open discussions of values & goals.
Common leadership pitfalls: Analysis paralysis / Not daring to make decisions. Thinking the leader need to have all answers.
2. Friction
The team starts challenging the defined boundaries, such as process and working agreements and voice differences in individual working styles and behaviors. Team members challenge each other. Some question the team’s goals altogether. Typically, this will be a challenging phase.
The need of the team: Understanding of each other’s behavioral style and intention. Improved ability to resolve disagreement effectively.
The leaders role: Support, coach & train the team in how to keep an open dialogue. Help solve conflicts. Build trust.
Common leadership pitfalls: Picking on individuals – stay focused on ideas, not personalities. A leader that’s unwilling to compromise. A belief that the team needs conflict to advance from this stage – allow disagreement but don’t foster conflict.
3. Structure
The team has the ability to resolve disagreement and integrates their personal differences. They revisit goals and objectives and redefine structures, working agreements, roles, and processes to support them.
The need of the team: Time to work out structures within the team such as processes, goals, roles, and working agreements. Everyone feels that issues regarding ways of working that are important to them have been discussed.
The leaders role: Act as consultants when needed. Support by removing impediments outside of the team.
Common leadership pitfalls: Not taking the time to make sure everyone’s perspective is represented. Trying to get everyone to conform to the same values. Trying to find the perfect solution.
4. Performing
The team have agreement on goals and objectives and work towards them together. The team is competent in decision making and conflict resolution with minimal or no supervision. The team rapidly gains important knowledge through knowledge sharing – there’s no information hoarding. Relationships and results are equally important.
The need of the team: The team is self-managed and continuously evaluate their own performance.
The leaders role: Share responsibilities with the team. Reward initiative. Coach & facilitate individual development.
Leadership pitfalls: Expecting to not have to further improve and still maintaining high performance.
Creating a new organization from an old one is a lot about detangling and understanding what belongs where. If you have done it before, you might be able to see patterns that are helpful. Using visualization and working in a structured way, step by step, and involving the people in it are some helpful ways of working.
Just as always in the complex domain, you are better off not using good practices (the same solution as others). By going by it in an experimental way, step by step, you can more safely find good solutions based on design principles and patterns.
When thinking of it you might realize that it actually is pretty similar to building great products that customers love – based on a legacy system. So why not use similar ways of working?
When are starting out we need to see what we currently have, and even that is a complex endeavor. To get that shared picture of the current organization you can use different techniques, and usually, a good mix is needed. In this post, we will look into how you can map up current teams, products, and customer journey, and the state of the systems and start to see what teams might take ownership over what is a step-by-step approach.
Products and Services
As a start, you can start together to map up the products that your customers pay for. Those are what we commonly call products in an Agile organization. This is where some money is exchanged, and if it is on a monthly basis, it might then be a service.
Below you see an example of the overall products and services mapped out, for both B2B and B2C. There is no need to make this any fancier than this. If you might understand later that you actually have some more products, you can easily add them then if you create a scalable system.
The retrospective is the improvement engine in the Agile team. It gives the team a structured way to inspect and adapt, making continuous improvements in their processes and ways of working. It is often done once every sprint when working in Scrum, or every second week when working in Kanban. But it could also be held at the end of a bigger project with everyone involved, or once every quarter across all Agile teams and stakeholders depending on what you want to improve. The purpose is to uncover what is working well that you should do more of, and what could be improved next to make the team even better. That is why it is the by far the most important ceremony and should be guarded and never down-prioritized.
In the retrospective, the team focuses on what worked well and what could be improved during the last sprint. There are many different ways to facilitate a retrospective and if you search for “Agile Retrospective” you get more than 2 000 000 results.
It is traditionally the Scrum Master who is responsible for improving the team’s process and creating a well-functioning and high-performing team, and thereby to facilitate the retrospective. A skilled Scrum Master can pick the right type of retrospective depending on the maturity of the team and whatever issues the team has to deal with at the moment, making sure all voices are heard and facilitating it in a way that enables the team to come up with the improvements and actions needed to make adjustments and experiments in the next sprint.
Usually a retrospective for a 2 week sprint is a 1-2 hour workshop. If you are conducting a big retrospective for many teams or for a longer period of time, you might want to add more time – and also do some more preparations beforehand, but a common sprint retrospective is usually covered in 1-2 hours with no more preparations than for the Scrum Master to plan the facilitation and invite all participants.
The 5 phases of a retrospective
Retrospectives are usually built up by five phases, with different flavors of facilitation:
Setting the stage
Collecting and mapping data
Prioritization
Ideating and coming up with what actions to take
Closing the retrospective
Make sure to make space for the improvement work in the team’s daily work
The actions from the sprint should be taken, or started, during the next sprint. And it is up to the team to decide who will do what, just like any other task on the sprint board, it is not the Scrum Master’s job to implement the improvements.
The best way to make this happen is usually to put each action in a story and to put it up on the Scrum or Kanban board along with the rest of the work- these are improvement stories that should be in every sprint. If some of the problems are impossible for the team to solve by themselves, the action should be brought to someone who can help. Some teams have a so-called “Scrum of Scrum” where all Scrum Masters meet up regularly to share their improvement areas and the actions that they need support with, or you could use a “Management Action Door”, where all teams put up actions that they need help with and meet up with people who can help on a regular basis to make it happen. You can probably figure out more ways to make it happen, what is important is that the environment for the team can be improved also with support from outside their own possible mandates and capabilities.
Tip:
If your team has a working agreement you ask them to bring it to the retrospectives, to reflect on how well they are following it and if it is helping the team to work well together. If your team doesn’t have one, spend 15-20 minutes on your first retrospective to create it.
The User Story Map is a simple and yet powerful way to visualize the story about how the users are using your product or service – and to build the right thing.
It is simple because it offers support to move quickly from understanding the user and their problems – to building and shipping the product, and it can be done just with sticky notes on a wall, or in simple digital tools.
It is powerful because it tells a story, it gives context to the user story and it gives a clear overview of the backlog and what we need to build to be able to support the user scenarios over all relevant touchpoints. It also supports collaboration and both horizontal and vertical slicing.
I am forever thankful to Jeff Patton who is the creator of User Story Mapping and from who I learned it from about 13 years ago or so. Without it I don’t know where I would have been today. It has been one of the most valuable methods for me to enable deliveries of great user experiences although in very complex domains, real deadlines (like sports events that happens when it happens) with one or up to +20 teams 🙏
It is a living, transparent, and value-based backlog that support the Product Owners and teams to find thin slices to release that create real value based on user scenarios, and not features. If you are looking to become a value and product-driven organization, this tool offers a lot of support.
It might not come as a shock to you that the User Story Map is the most common tool used for Agile product planning with one or several teams. Jeff Patton invented it and brought it in as a major part of the CSPO (Certified Product Owner) training when he first created that many years ago for Scrum Alliance. Jeff Patton, with a background in UX and design, has been a great force in Agilizing customer-centric ways of working and finding ways to connect it in a natural way to Scrum and product teams.
User Story Map Concepts
A user story map tells a story about a type of person doing something to reach a goal. Make sure to include them in your map along with a little information about them. Try using lightweight personas or roles to describe your users.
These questions can give you an idea of what a well-functioning Agile team looks and feels like. If you are a newly formed team you can see the questions as a benchmark for the future and continue to revisit them as a team, as your Agility grows.
These questions can be discussed and answered in combination with the Team Maturity questions.
Why self-evaluation matters
There is a reason teams should evaluate themselves, and not be evaluated. If the team takes responsibility for their own progress and improvement, they also take ownership of evaluating their own performance. If someone else would use their data to compare teams across the organization, or to perhaps set salaries, then it would not be a safe place anymore and people and teams would not dare to show any flaws, and improvement would, therefore, be impossible.
A CEO once said that he did not ever again want to see the company miss a chance with the customers just because the marketing department did not have the budget to market a new product that emerged from customer feedback. Having everyone aligned around the customer, working cross-functionally, and being able to shift focus as ONE organization to join in the dance is becoming a competitive advantage.
Traditional budgeting and financial steering do not work well with Agile Ways of Working and it does not support the strategic flexibility that we often need in today’s VUCA-world. Based on the Beyond Budgeting principles and inspired by the practices more dynamic ways of handling the financial side of the business have started to emerge that in a better way enables agility in the organization.
Getting started by separating the processes
When moving from traditional budgeting to dynamic budgeting, most organizations start with separating the budgeting process into three different parts: target, resource allocation, and prognosis. The reason for this is that they are all different numbers, and we need to be able to optimize each process to become more dynamic.
Separation like this enables us to start to elaborate and improve each of these different parts. We always want to make sure to make our processes event-driven – and not calendar-driven.
Impact Goal
We want to make it:
Instead of fixed goals, we set impact goals that enable us to look for different solutions and work outcome-based instead of output-based.
Inspiring and brave
VUCA robust
Objective – expected impact
Not in detail, hypothesis are good
Here we can start to experiment with different ways of working with goals. Some organizations try and like Objective and Key Results, OKRs, others might like Compay Bets and Team Missions better, and some might find their own way based on the principles (see more in the Agile Management part about this).
There are no one-size-fits-all, but rather you have to look at the context, culture, and nature of the business to see what fits and dare to experiment and try different ways of improving both autonomy and alignment. The ultimate goal should probably be that we do the right things and that we can change the plan in a good way based on new insights.
Why do we need Agile Product Management you might think? The main reason is to ensure we are building the right thing. Having both customer focus, and understanding what the priorities are for the business is crucial for most product organizations to survive in a highly competitive market.
When delivering software, digital services, and products in traditional ways we often end up acting on every idea and need we can think of beforehand, without actually knowing if the needs are real and if the solutions would actually help the customer to solve a real problem.
Only half of what we build is being used!
Research shows that most digital solutions are poorly prioritized, where only 20% of the features are being used always or often and 16% sometimes, the rest is just clogging the user interface making it difficult to use, and the user experience terribly ineffective. On top of that, it costs a lot of money not just to build, but also to maintain that 100%. What if we could instead deliver only those 20% or 36%, and in the right order pleasing our users and giving us feedback on how it is being used? This is what good product management is about.
Det här är en rolig och lätt workshop att hålla i härligt pirat-tema. Och vem älskar inte pirater? Yo ho ho!
Den här workshopen har jag faciliterat ett flertal gånger och alltid med positiv framåtanda, samsyn kring vad uppdraget är och lite rolig teambuilding där alla delar med sig lite om vilka de är. Du kan hålla workshopen i rummet på en whiteboard, eller använda den här digitala varianten i Mural.
Workshopen lämpar sig för Chefer, Produktägare, Scrum Masters eller tex produktteam.
Jag har skrivit instruktionerna här utifrån att du kanske inte tidigare har faciliterat så mycket, eller kanske inte har använd Mural. Min förhoppning är att fler ska våga sig på att prova och hålla riktigt bra, roliga och engagerande workshops även digitalt. Så hoppas att du vill testa 🙂
Workshopen är uppdelad i en första del där deltagarna delas upp i mindre breakout rooms (grupper), och en gemensam del där man delar med sig av resultatet och hittar vägen fram tillsammans.
Här nedan går jag igenom de olika stegen som finns i Muralen. Väl inne i Muralen finns innehållet och stegen vilket gör att det är lätt för dig att facilitera den utifrån mallen.
Som facilitator i Mural har du “facilitation super powers”. Dessa ska du använda för att skapa en bra facilitering för gruppen och se till att allas röst får höras och att de kommer fram till ett resultat tillsammans – och håller tiden. Här går jag igenom några av dom som du hittar i toppen av fänstret i din webbläsare när du är inne i Mural och du har fått rollen som facilitator.
Från vänster till höger så har du som facilitator:
Dot voting. Om gruppen ska rösta om ngt så slår du på den och bestämmer hur många röster alla har individuellt. När alla är klara visar du automagiskt resultatet.
Private mode. Det här är en smart funktion om folk jobbar individuellt. Då ser man inte varandras lappar vilket gör att alla har lättare att bidra och fokuserad och gruppen kommer fram till bättre resultat. Om du vill använda den i den här workshopen så kanske en i varje grupp ska lägga in lapparna och dela sin skärm med de andra i ert videomöte.
Custom toolbar. Här väljer du vilka verktyg deltagarna ska se till vänster i Mural vilket kan förenkla för dom att hitta och välja rätt funktioner under workshopen.
Laser pointer. Som det låter. En laserpekare som du kan använda för att guida deltagarna i var de ska titta.
Timer. Och sist i raden hittar du timern som du använder för att tids-boxa olika aktiviteter och hjälpa deltagarna att hålla tiden. Timern plingar när tiden går ut så att alla som är med inne i Mural hör det, och den syns också för alla. Detta är en jättebra funktion för att se till att alla grupper och individer inte fastnar i långa ofruktsamma diskussioner, och att de levererar värde som grupp.
Listen to Dmytro Yarmak as he shares his story about how he became an officer in the Ukrainian Army, leading 150 men, and how he has taking on that role and huge responsibility.
By using Agile principles and ways of working he has managed to move from being reactive as a leader, to proactive. Dmytro has been able to build an amazing culture of autonomy, responsibility and humanity as well as building up skills for people new to war and survival (as almost all were).
It is a really strong story about chaos, bravery, humanity and leadership in extreme VUCA that he shares. A big thank you to our hero Dmytro Yarmak for sharing this with us live from the war ❤️ and even making us smile and laugh (!!) ☺️ What an humbling experience for all of us 🙏
Please consider donating to support the Ukrainian Army in the war against Russia:
In this episode our founder Mia Kolmodin talks to Dmytro Yarmak. Listen to him tell the story of transitioning from an Agile Coach to an officer in the UA army and how he applies the same fundamentals and methods in his new role.
Dmytro describes how guiding principles like providing clarity and information, creating psychological safe environments in the teams, raising the right competencies and the ability to delegate, the ukranian army has learned to innovate and find new ways forward in this difficult and demanding situation.
Dmytro will also host a live seminar on October 5th where he will share more about his story.
I detta avsnitt av Dandy Conversations pratar jag med Staffan Nöteberg som berätta om sina böcker, vad Monostasking är och hur du kan använda det i ditt dagliga arbete för bättre kontroll över det du vill göra och öka ditt fokus på dagens uppgifter.
Hör honom också berätta kort om den gratis frukostföreläsning han kommer hålla hos oss den 22 september i Stockholm. Är du intresserad av att bli mer produktiv och mer stressfri vardag så ska du definitivt komma på föreläsningen.
In this episode of Dandy Conversations our founder and CEO Mia Kolmodin met up with the Trainer and Facilitator of LEGO Serious Play Per Kristiansen to talk about serious games (or serious play as they call it at Lego) that we love using as a safe way for exploring complex strategy and play out different scenarios.
Per tells the story how it all got started at LEGO when their CEO needed a better way to work with strategy and they created Lego Serious Play. Per was part of the internal research team that discovered that using lego bricks for simulation and learning was just as useful for adults as it is for children. He tells a fascinating story of how they first failed, but later discovered how to make it work and developed it to the metod that it is today, and how it has now expanded from being an internal method within Lego to a global phenomena that it is today.
If you are interested in learning how to facilitate the Lego Serious Play Method Per travels all around the world to facilitate Lego Serious Play trainings and we are really happy to welcome him to Dandy People and Stockholm soon again.
Check out our upcoming training with Lego Serious Play:
In this episode of Dandy Conversations our founder and CEO Mia Kolmodin met up with the founder and CEO of Adventures with Agile (AWA) Simon Powers to talk about the values and purposes that drives their companies. It is a close and warm conversation about changing mindsets, making people flourish and become their best and how we can support our customers to meet their goals and visions.
We are so happy to be able to share the Monotasking in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in Turkish! Thank you so much Ender Yüksel for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
The posters is published under Creative Commons License, so please use it and share it as you like. If you are interested in doing a translation to any other languages please let me know and I will help you with the file and publish it here in the blog as well.
You are free to:
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Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Den här postern skapades för att ge ett stöd för organisationer och team kring vad ett välfungerande team är. För att en organisation ska få värdet av Agil team, eller team i allmänhet, så är det bra att känna till vad som gör dom välfungerande och högpresterande.
I en Agil organisation är det teamet som levererar värde och det är i team vi organiserar oss kring värdefulla leveranser. Genom att skapa en miljö som är gynnsam för team och som möjliggör både autonomitet och alignment så kan teamen bli högpresterande och leverera värde själva – och med andra team i hög takt. Detta optimerar värdet av organisationen – och det gör att människor känner sig fantastiska.
Ladda ner postern Agila team i ett nötskal gratis
Ladda ner postern genom länken nedan, eller genom att klicka på postern. Du får då ner den i PDF-format och kan skriva ut den i vilken storlek du vill. Se villkor längst ner här på sidan.
Några grunder för att få retur på investeringen av Agila team
När vi pratar om Agila team så menar vi högpresterande och välfungerande team. Team som kan utforska det okända, innovera, lösa komplexa problem och som levererar i jämn, ofta hög, takt. För att bygga den här typen av team så finns det några mönster att använda sig av. Team som delar mål och behöver varandra är i sig ett mönster som enligt forskning ökar engagemang och medarbetarnöjdhet.
Några värdefulla mönster för Agila team
Tydligt syfte Syfte ger fokus, vilket ökar takten och värde- leveransen från teamet med 100%.
Mandat Ett tydligt mandat minimerar byråkratin, vilket ökar takten och möjlig innovation från teamet med 100%.
Små och stabila team – “Brooks Law” Teamstorlek spelar verkligen roll. Team på 5-7 personer som är högpresterande är 100% snabbare.
T-formade kompetenser T-form av teammdlemmarnas kompetens ökar leveranstakten med 100%.
Medarbetarengagemang Att vara i ett team ger en känsla av samhörighet och kontext, vilket ökar medarbetarens engagemang med 100%.
Alla tillhör ett team
Teamet är grunden i en Agil organisation och alla individer tillhör ett team (inte en grupp), även de utanför tech, IT eller utvecklingsorganisationen.
Utvecklingsteam Utvecklar, förvaltar och levererar produkter eller tjänster till externa eller interna kunder.
Ledarskapsteam Agerar som supporterande ledare med ett growth mindset för flera team och stöttar teamen i att ta snabba & bra beslut själva.
Supportteam Vissa team agerar support för andra team för att ge bästa möjliga autonomitet och inriktning. Tex genom att utbilda, vara mentorer eller bygga stödsystem. Ofta fasas dessa ut över tid när övriga team har fått den förmågan som support teamet bidrog med.
Dessa tre typer av team är i grunden vad i stort sett alla team skulle bestå av om de var Agila, men kanske med andra namn på utveckligsteam om de levererar en annan typ av tjänst till sina kunder, tex ett vårdteam på ett sjukhem. Men mönsterna för välfungerande högpresterande Agila team är densamma.
We are so happy to be able to share the Product organizational design patterns poster with you for free also in German! Thank you so much Andre Ullman for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
What do you usually say is the difference between those who succeed and those who don’t? Those who succeed always tries something new when “failing” using the learnings, and they always take smaller steps moving in their wanted direction to get to their next goal on the way.
With that in mind we designed this canvas as part of a training we created some time ago, the Dandy People Agile Power Up program. The main purpose of the improvement canvas is to give support to teams to continuously improve. What is great about it is that it works in any context, on BIG stuff or a bit smaller, and for any team or group, or individual.
During our training program that lasts over 10 weeks the participants gets to use it as an exercise in smaller groups to get familiar with how to use it and the thinking behind it, but also bring it in in to their day to day work. Many says it really helps them to focus and do real improvements step by step. Some also realize they have never really thought about change and improvement as a step by step process before and thet this canvas helped them to focus on finding the next small steps to take in the right direction, instead of trying to go big and reach that full, often too complex, goal directly.
First you start by understanding your current situation and defining what the challenge is.This is a great thing to do together to get a shared view of how it is today and what you think could improve. Write it in the canvas.
Definition of awesome
Then you want to take a look at and define what it would look like if it was just awesome, if everything was like you would like it to be. Define it together as well and put it too into the canvas. Getting a shared picture of this is crucial for enabling you to get there together.
Next wanted state
What would a next target state look like as a step in the right direction? What would have changed then? Also look at the time frame, when would you like it to be achieved? This should then be something you can evaluate to see if you have reached this next wanted state or not – and if not come up with new next steps or experiments to do. Or if you have reached your next wanted state, is it like your definition of awesome, or do you want to continue to moe closer to it? If so, set your new next wanted state and continue once again.
First steps
What are the actions you can take to move closer to your next wanted state? Evaluate if you are moving towards your next wanted state when possible and adjust your actions if needed, and define more when needed.
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile Transformational Leadership in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in German! Thank you so much Andre Ullman for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
I’m well aware that people often see me as quite a fearless person. I often get comments like “but you are never afraid of anything”. But as all people I have had lots of struggles every day to overcome my own fears, to prove to myself I can do something I thought I couldn’t. And just as probably most people I have tried and failed a lot. One of my mantras I usually say to myself, and others around me is that it will solve itself somehow just as long as we stick to our values and believe in ourself and each other. As Dandy People now has turned 5 years old and we have grown to over 20 people I’m writing this post aiming to tell a bit of the story behind Dandy People and share some of my own personal fears, beliefs and our struggles and successes as a team along the way. None of this will be any silver bullets, but I hope you might find it valuable and perhaps inspiring.
The Dandy team on our spring conference 2022 celebrating turning 5 years together.
Building a learning organization where fast and shared learning is a key strategy
Curiosity is one of our most important characteristics as humans and we should always find new ways to explore and increase the pace of our own learning. I have always been very curious and loved learning new things just as long as no one is forcing me. My own strategy to learn new things has often been to work together with people with other skill sets to learn from them, and with them, while testing and building stuff together. This has been one of my core beliefs of how to deliver value and a foundation that has shaped how we want to work and run Dandy. In Dandy we always see learning as part of our job. This means we shape our assignments to work two and two as often as possible, or in teams. Many times we have shared a “1 FTE” (yes, our customers sometimes call it that) assignment on two people, and we always look for assignments for a team. The reason for this is both that we have a much bigger success rate on tough assignments by doing that, and also that we get to learn from each other on the job and we will live as we preach..
This belief around learning has also from the start made us prioritize having quite a big financial space for each individual to put time and money on learning new skills outside of work. Everyone is responsible for their own learning but of course we support each other. By doing this and always striving to deliver valuable training and learning sessions for others we make sure we are always at the front line and we will always be learning, making us ready for any new challenge that might occur within Dandy or at our customers.
Starting up my own business – getting over the fear of hiring people
But if we go back to the very beginning, before we started Dandy People, one of the biggest fears I had was to hire people and to be the one responsible for the wellbeing and financial security of other people outside of my own family. This was holding me back for years to move beyond having my own consultancy with only me, myself and I. This was the first obstacle I had to manage and get over when starting Dandy People. Before this I had been running my own company and doing Agile coaching, pretty much the same as we do today in Dandy, but under the umbrella of another consultancy. At that time I had way too much to do and had to say no to helping more and more customers which made me want to find another solution. I felt a huge need to build my own team to help the customers I had and others like them to bridge the gap between business and IT and by that building organizations that could deliver customer centric solutions. I was just getting more and more customers and I really struggled to find the time to help them in a good way as a one woman band. So knowing what I wanted to do in my company wasn’t a struggle at all. Just continuing with what I did, but together with a team of great people. I also knew I wanted to start a_real_company with people who shared my vision, not an umbrella company where everyone follows their own vision, and not just a group of friends who only share the space and occasionally meet and socialize. I often find it just as valuable to know what you don’t want as what you do want, especially when it comes to business.
After looking around for about a year for someone to start my company with, I realized that the people I enjoyed working with all had their own ideas and visions of companies they wanted to start, and none of those was inline with mine. So I would have to go alone… this could easily have been the end of this dream, since I was pretty sure I would never manage it alone. I would work myself to death then. But it happened so that when we came home to Sweden after celebrating Christmas abroad, we got a phone call at the airport that my husband’s company just got sold, meaning he would get out of running a full time business in just a couple of months! This was amazing news both because it meant we as a family would get a small amount of money from his business that we could invest and he would be available to help me with my dream. The choice was easy. He became my business partner. Just a few months after that, in April 2017, we officially started Dandy People and we had an address downtown for our office where we could set up seminars and meetups to meet customers and candidates for employment. After just another few months, after summer we were already a small team of people that could take on customer assignments and collaborate on business development, just as I was longing for. We have never had any problems paying salaries, not even during Covid (but more on that later) and I have never regretted taking on the role as an employer. I am so happy it didn’t stop me from taking the step to grow my business.
Sharing is caring – and it may just be what you need to build a strong brand
You might have seen or used the infographic posters with our logo on. Most of them have my face on them since I am the creator and designer of them. The story started before I started Dandy People and was one of the kicks in the butt I needed to make the decision to start my own company. I created the first Agile in a Nutshell poster just to be able to give something visual that captured the most important things for the class at Hyper Island that I was going to run a half day short training for together with my colleague Per. We had a lot of experience based exercises as always, and was going to do some theory using a whiteboard. But I felt something more was needed to help them remember afterwards, so I decided just the day before to do a one pager with the key topics. After the training I published it as a PDF for download on our blog just if anyone else would be interested in using it. And it happened a LOT of people were interested in that. A few weeks later I was in Paris on a weekend with Mathias and suddenly I realized I had over hundreds of comments on the share of the blogpost on LinkedIn and many friend requests. My first thought was of course that something was wrong with LinkedIn, but it wasn’t. It just exploded due to people really liked the poster. Sharing valuable content for free has been a great business model and so we have continued to do so. When we create new posters we usually set them free on our Dandy blog within days up to 6 months, and also other content such as canvases, coaching models and serious games.
Some of the posters in the series.
Today I have lost control over how many downloads of the infographic posters we have, and also how many posters we have shared. But a few years ago it was close to 350.000 downloads (totally free with no email signups or nothing). People within the Agile community are translating the posters for free to their language to be able to use them better and we also share those translated posters to everyone, so today we can offer our infographics on Agile topics for free in 15 languages to anyone interested, making the Dandy brand really strong. If you would ask most management consultancies they would probably say this is a no can do for them and any business. I’d say it is exactly the right thing to do if you want to be part of the growing Agile community and if you don’t want to spend huge amounts on useless brand campaigns. Of course it might take some bravery (some would probably call it stupidity), design skills and that you feel fairly safe you know your stuff to make it work. But testing and see how it goes can take you a long way.
Building a company with a strong brand and still minimizing known risks
As I wanted to build a_real_company having an office was important to me and something I wouldn’t negotiate with. Many small business owners already then had their offices at home, but for me it would mean a huge benefit to have a good address downtown in the city to meet with customers and I was sure it would also be easier to attract employees. But we know that statistics say most startups don’t make it due to high costs linked to long contracts, and office space is just exactly that. Meaning getting our own space with a long contract was a big no-no, and that’s why we chose a shared office space instead. We picked one with the best address, a short leasing contract of just one month, where we could have our own room, with good big spaces to run seminars and training, and where we could have our dog 🙂 Those were the key principles and worked out well. We have been able to stay there for 5 years, moving into bigger and more rooms when needed, and now when we have outgrown it, we can easily get our very own space. The move to our very own space is just weeks away now and it feels just like moving out from your parents. We are (almost) grownups finally!
In this episode I met with Per Kristiansen to talk about serious games (or serious play as they call it at Lego) that we love using as a safe way for exploring complex strategy and play out different scenarios. Per tells the story how it all got started at LEGO when their CEO needed a better way to work with strategy and they created Lego Serious Play. Per was part of the internal research team that discovered that using lego bricks for simulation and learning was just as useful for adults as it is for children. He tells a fascinating story of how they first failed, but later discovered how to make it work and developed it to the metod that it is today, and how it has now expanded from being an internal method within Lego to a global phenomena that it is today.
The conversation starts with us sharing our purposes and values behind our two companies, Trivium and Dandy People, and it happens to be a perfect match 🙂
If you are interested in learning how to facilitate the Lego Serious Play Method Per travels all around the world to facilitate Lego Serious Play trainings and we are really happy to welcome him to Dandy People and Stockholm too
In this episode of Dandy Conversations I met up with the founder and CEO of Adventures with Agile (AWA) Simon Powers to talk about the values and purposes that drives their companies. We talk about how our work aims to changing mindsets, making people flourish and become their best and how we can support our customers to meet their goals and visions.
I first came to talk to Simon many years back when I first created the Agile in a Nutshell with the Agile Onion which is a creation by Simon, at least in the form that we have it in the poster with the arrow and the descriptions. I contacted him then to see if he was ok with me putting it in the poster – and he was 🙂
Today we both run successful Agile coaching agencies built on the same mindset, to collaborate and use the power of the network to help as many as possible get value from Agile.
The reason we recorded this video was to share our collaboration as companies more openly with the world. AWA have been running their fabulous Agile Coaching trainings with us at Dandy as their partner for Sweden for a few years already, and we are really happy for the collaboration since we know they deliver trainings in the same way we at Dandy do, with Training from Back of the Room and with trainers who themselves work with – and are experts within what they teach others. So no boring theory sessions, instead engaging, fun, deep insights and hands on learning.
We work together at Dandy to create and adapt trainings for our customers’ needs. We often sit together to generate ideas. These sessions, like the one we just had, are unbelievably fun. This time, we had read an article that inspired us to create this game. Namely: https://www.creativehackers.co/posts/the-subtle-art-of-fucking-up
Hence the game was called “Biggest Fuck Ups Game” 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile User Experience Poster with you for free also in Turkish! Thank you so much Ender Yüksel for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile Product Ownership Poster with you for free also in Turkish! Thank you so much Ender Yüksel for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share the Monotasking in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in Turkish! Thank you so much Ender Yüksel for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile Leadership in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in Turkish! Thank you so much Ender Yüksel for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile HR in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in simplified Chinese! Thank you so much, Paulino Kok and his team at agilizing.com for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile Recruiting in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in traditional Chinese! Thank you so much, Paulino Kok and his team at agilizing.com for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile Recruiting in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in simplified Chinese! Thank you so much, Paulino Kok and his team at agilizing.com for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in Korean! Thank you so much,Francis Youngmin Kim, for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
Since we like to have fun and laugh here at Dandy People we did an Agile Advent Calendar last year full of Agile inspired Dad Jokes, so if you missed it we have the wrap up for you here.
December 1
Cycle time is a measure of the elapsed time when work starts on a product or feature until it’s ready for delivery. Cycle time tells how long (in calendar time) it takes to complete the product, also including non value adding time (waiting time).
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile HR in a Nutshell Poster with you for free also in Polish! Thank you so much, Anna Senften for your awesome work with the translation 🙂
The posters are published under Creative Commons License, so please use it and share it as you like. If you are interested in doing a translation to any other languages please let me know and I will help you with the file and publish it here in the blog as well.
En teambaserad organisation är ett ekosystem av team. Dessa kort är tänkta att användas för att kartlägga nuläget för respektive team i organisationen och sätta mål för vilka typer av team man skulle vilja ha och därigenom identifiera vad som håller teamen tillbaka från att ta sig dit.
Den här modifierade versionen av team topologier bygger på det fantastiska arbetet från teamtopologies.com som är skapat utifrån ett DevOps-perspektiv. De tillägg och justeringar vi har gjort på ursprungsmodellen syftar till att möjliggöra en tydligare produkt-ledd organisation där agila ledningsteam utifrån Agile Management Areas är en viktig del och justering för kundcentrerade produktteam där ofta även marknad och tech möts i gemensamma team, i stället för enbart stream aligned vilket är mer vanligt på en IT / Infrastrukturavdelning.
Conway’s Law är ett begrepp som pekar på att system ofta speglar organisationen som bygger dem, dvs för att justera de teamen man i nuläget har som ofta är av typen komponent-team och röra sig mot ett ekosystem som bygger på produktteam behöver man göra en omvänd Conway’s Law design. Då utgår man från vilka förmågor man skulle vilja att organisationen, och teamen har, kanske vill man att teamen har förmåga att ansvara för en optimal upplevelse direkt till slutanvändare utan mellanhänder. Äger produktutvecklings-processen end-to-end. Tar ansvar för det de bygger över tid och ser till att det skapar verksamhets och affärsnytta på både kort- och lång sikt – det vill säga vara ett Produktteam. Viktigt är att betona att man alltid behöver en mix av team i alla organisationer, enbart produkt-team är inte eftersträvansvärt, utan vanligt är att man har plattformsteam samt även enabling team, vad man dock vill gå ifrån är komplicerat subsystem-team (komponentteam), samt ha team med både produkt, plattform och enabling uppdrag.
Utifrån det målet kan man sedan identifiera vilka typer av team man har i nuläget, samt vilka typer av team man behöver för att steg för steg förändra den tekniska arkitekturen och förmågan i organisationen för att möjliggöra mer autonoma produktteam på sikt.
Alla team behöver även få tydligt definierade mål som de kan arbeta mot. Dessa mål ser olika ut beroende på vilket typ av team de är, men målet brukar var att ha uppdrag för teamen som spänner över ca 6 – 12 månader som gör att de själva kan se om de bidrar med värde och stöttar dom i att göra löpande prioriteringar.
Target Group:Ledare och chefer, oavsett branch eller nivå. Alla som vill öka sitt teams, arbetsgrupp eller organisations innovationskraft och effektivitet. Ledare som vill leda en snabbrörlig agil organisation.
Teachers:Björn Sandberg, Mia Kolmodin, Jenny Persson
