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The Agile Hybrid Team in a Nutshell

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For good or bad, the pandemic, has transformed the way teams work around the world. Only a fraction of organizations has all employees back at their offices, while the biggest part is either having employees back in the office a few days a week or having them work remotely 100%. Some have even decided to expand their recruitment abroad. The positive side is that we are now more used to remote working and we have a broader toolbox to make us feel closer despite the distance. But on the flip side, we now have to face a new set of challenges both from the long-term remote working and the mix of onsite and remote work… How can we get the same ownership, engagement, team bonding, and awareness while working from our bedrooms or maybe from the other side of the globe?

The purpose of this poster is to create more awareness of those challenges and enable some reflections in the form of simple tips to try. After all, there is no solution that fits all and the effects are very different from team to team or company to company.

Download the Hybrid Agile Teams Poster for Free Here (PDF) >

French: Download the poster for free here (PDF) >

Spanish: Download the poster for free here (PDF) >

What is a Hybrid Team?

Hybrid Teams are those teams that are either fully remote team, or that work sometimes in the same office and sometimes remotely. It is very important to separate the “types” of those hybrid teams because they have different characteristics and their setup creates different needs and challenges.

Distributed sub-teams are those where we have people working in different offices, say for example a team that is divided between 2 locations, like half the team in Sweden and the other half in Germany. This is challenging for team growth as the team will naturally split into sub-teams and might never feel like one entity. It is important to focus on team-building activities and even sharing working work across sub-teams.

Partially dispersed teams are those where the main team is working from the same location but perhaps one or two people are working from some where else. This is not the best setup as it can make those people feel as if they are outsiders, and the level of inclusion will drastically reduce. In this case, it is important to balance the participation and contribution of everybody to make sure that even those joining remotely can feel part of the team.

Fully dispersed teams are those teams with people joining from different locations. Even if it might seem the most challenging setup, this is actually better than the others types of hybrid teams when it comes to team development and team dynamics, because everybody is sharing the same situation. It is, of course, challenging to create that deep trust and deep bonding as the members do not have usually many chances to meet us.

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The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Transforming Habits for Agile Coaches

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My client is still happy. 

My goal is to coach myself through a transformation from couch potato to marathoner (well, a half-marathon). It’s been life-changing. 

Behavior science is the secret sauce

The barriers and obstacles I experience with “becoming a marathoner” are similar to those experienced by organizations wanting to “become agile”. The secret sauce lies in behavior science. Through this marathoning process, I’ve uncovered my own behavior-based twist of the Deming cycle and Lean Startup and am using them to inspire a Lean Performance Management model for teams and organizations. It’s always fun when personal and professional worlds collide!

The Behavior-Change Cycle

Below is the Behavior-Change Cycle I created for myself inspired by the Deming Cycle and how behavior scientists approach organizational change:

The Behavior Change Cycle I created for my transformation
(more…)

Avoid losing your most valuable employees

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When the pace has been picked up and everyday life spins at its highest pace the increase of sick leave caused by stress will increase. And those affected are your most valuable loyal employees that turn themselves inside out to deliver at work and in their private lives.

Sick leave due to stress of unhealthy work environments has increased to the double in the past ten years and is now the most common reason for sick leave in Sweden, and women are overrepresented in the statistics.

Facts from Försäkringskassan:

  • Sick leave due to stress has increased by 359% in the years 2010-2017
  • 25% of those that have been burned out is at risk of relapse, which means that 1 in 4 people fall back into sick leave
  • 10% of elite athletes are on sick leave due to stress
  • Stress-related illness costs Sweden 70 billion in socio-economic losses every year
Isabelle Svärd talking at Agila Sverige about her own signs of stress in 2017 and how she used agile tools as a tactics when returning to work life.
Video can be found here. (In swedish)

Once a person has been burned out, it can take up to 10 years to recover, it is one of the longest recovery periods, even longer than some cancer diagnoses. Therefore, it is extremely important to detect and slow down this development in time. As a fellow human being and as a leader, it is important that you see signs of unhealthy stress.

These are some examples of signs of unhealthy stress.

Aggressive tone and behavior
Aggressiveness and short tone are signs that the brain has turned on its flight and fight behavior, to protect against dangers, and should be taken seriously. Sit down in a quiet room alone with the person and describe how you experience their behavior, without judging it, and then ask how the person is feeling.

Sleep problems
If a person repeatedly shares that they have slept poorly, have difficulty falling asleep or wake up very early in the morning and cannot fall back asleep, these are signs that the stress has gone way to far. When a person doesn’t sleep, it  means our natural recovery system has stopped working.

Stomach problems, weight gain or weight loss
When flight and figh behavior is activated, several of our physical functions are turned off. Including the stomach and metabolism. If a person complains of stomach problems or has increased or decreased weight quickly, it may be due to prolonged stress.

Concentration problems
Just like above, the brain’s capacity will be gradually reduced. One behavior that can be noticed is if someone starts to forget about meetings, tasks or doesn’t contribute in the same way as before.

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Recovery and reflection as part of the workday is conditions for lasting a worklife

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Our health is the most important thing we have. Our health is something that we as people, leaders, colleagues, employees and employers should hold as our highest priority. It is not enough to offer a wellness allowance, there must be room for wellness, reflection and recovery during work hours.

My work causes me both stress, anxiety and feelings of not being enough. And how is it right that I need my private time to compensate for that? I believe that my work hours should include everything I need to be able to do my job in the best possible way. For me, this means that I need space between meetings to process what has been said and time to prepare for the next meeting. I need time alone for my thoughts and reflections to be able to work out the best solution to a problem, create a good setup for the next meeting, or think about how to handle a situation.

As a leader, I owe those that follow me to think before I act. I owe them to be prepared for a meeting, to reflect on situations before I make decisions and think trough how I will handle a conflict. I also need space to learn new things, to read about research and new methods of leadership, team and psychological safety. This is important for me to be able to do my job, in the way that I want to do it.

I also need time when the brain can recover and turn off all impressions and thoughts. Where I have the opportunity to connect to my body that carries me through my work day. For me, it is yoga, which I often practice at lunchtime or before I go home. For you it might be a walk in the park, a horse back ride, a run around the nearby lake or to walk your dog. The important thing is that you know exactly what you need to have a sustainable work situation. Regardless, we all need recovery as part of our work day to be able to get through it, and the next day, and the next.

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Leading yourself and others by trusting your why

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We are exposed to an incredible number of impressions in one day. We are met by advertising on the way to work, pictures on instagrams and ads on facebook, emails about fantastic offers and news from all over the world. At work, we are often met by policies, attitudes, expectations of others and performance reviews. Not being able to sort in this and finding your own meaning and purpose can create stress, uncertainty and a feeling of being overwhelmed. The importance of being able to lead yourself, and others, to create a sustainable lifestyle has never been as big as now.

 

Your values ​​and your why

I see the personal leadership as something that needs to grow when you find your own values ​​and purpose. “Start with why” was founded by Simon Sinek, he says that organizations need to start by establishing why they exist before they can start talking about how and what they do. It is fully applicable to the personal leadership as well,  you need to find your own “WHY” before you know what to do and how.

To find your own WHY, you first need to know your values. What is most important to me? You can do this by listening inwards, by turning off all impressions and expectations from the outside world. To ignore the template that society is trying to put us all into and listen to yourself. There is much talk about meditation and that it is the only way to listen inward, but I think that when you do something that you love, whether it is to meditate, yoga, paint, walk your dog, ride or run, it is your opportunity to hear your inner voice . The one who says what you really like and value. The key is to listen and above all to trust what that voice is saying. Trust yourself, that you know best what is right for you.

Based on your values, the why is easier to find. My WHY statement is:
“I empower myself and the people around me so we can become the best people that we can be”.

Exercise WHY statement

To write your WHY statement, follow these guidelines:

  • Simple and clear
  • Only one sentence
  • Language you use yourself
  • Work both at work and in private
  • Write several until you find the right one

Safety and learning

To feel that your purpose is being fulfilled and developed, our sense of security and learning is important. The human instincts are the same today as they were in the stone-age and our brain is divided into three motivational systems. The model created by Paul Gilbert consists of the red threat system, the blue drive system and the green soothing system.

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The most challenging agile pattern

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In our breakfast seminar ”Agile change management” the participants each get a deck of Pattern Cards and are asked to choose the pattern that is most challenging for them right now.

Over 100 people have been asked this question. These are the top 3 challenges:

  1. WIP – limit work in progress
  2. Optimize for flow
  3. Minimal bureaucracy

Wip limit pattern card

What is WIP?

WIP is an acronym for Work In Progress and basically means how many different things are being worked on at the same time.

Many agile methods, like Kanban, strives to limit WIP, to reduce the number of concurrent initiatives.

Why should I limit WIP?

When you have many concurrent initiatives, working on many different things at the same time, you might feel effective, but in truth you are not.

(more…)

Cynefin Context Cards – Enabling Discovery and Delivery and Innovation in Agile teams

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cynefin context cards

Free Download of the cards for printout (high resolution PDF) > 

You can also purchase these decks of cards in our Online Shop >

These cards changes the concept of estimation and help teams work and think as a team to innovate and discover the solution of the product, instead of just delivering it. If you work in Scrum you can use them on your Refinement, or on the Sprint planning. If your’e in a Kanban team you use them when ever you have need of planning.

Background and WHY

Much too often we see organizations where there are many handovers end to end from understanding there is a customer need to actually delivering something to solve it. This situation causes not only long lead times, but it also kills innovation and it often result in delivery of the wrong solution. The reason is that we too often don’t understand the complexity of the problem, and treat it as a simple or complicated problem. To enable a change in thinking around how to solve different problems and also a change in behavior, we created these cards.

We are all as humans eager to move in to the “solution domain” to early, it´s just human, and we´ve all done it. Perhaps because it´s much more fun to ideate. And often that’s also what we get rewarded for. This makes us often solve either the wrong problem, or find the wrong solution – both leaving us without impact. When solving complex problems it is important to stay in the “problem domain” for a bit to learn about the problem, the context and the people who has the problem.

When we work in Agile teams we need to find ways to take in both complex, not yet solved problems, in to the sprint, as well as deliver on those already discovered solutions that we know will work. Often we call this continuously discovery & delivery, -something many Agile teams struggle with since the ordinary scrum way to do estimates in story points does not help teams stay in the problem domain, but often forces them to move in to the solution domain premature. Asking teams to estimate solutions creates a fixed mindset opposed to a growth mindset which is what we need to be able to build an innovating learning culture, otherwise the problem will show when the team try to build it, making it take longer to deliver, or when the customer uses the solution making them call customer service complaining, or leaving the service.

These cards are a tool to enable that growth mindset and open up dialogues between the people and competences needed to understand the problems and build the solution needed to create business and customer value. (more…)

X-team Silos Game – Découvrez comment fonctionne une équipe agile efficace

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Équipes multidisciplinaires Agile

x-funktional teamLes équipes multidisciplinaires sont des équipes avec toutes les expertises néecessaires pour créer un produit et le mettre en production. Cependant, il ne suffit pas de rassembler un groupe de personnes différentes et de s’attendre à ce qu’elles agissent en équipe. Ce jeu essaie de montrer les conséquences du maintien d’une expertise et d’un rôle unique par les membres d’une équipe.

X-team silos game french

Instructions Préparatifs

Vous avez besoin de 48 morceaux de lego par jeu et par équipe, et ils doivent être dans 4 couleurs différentes, jaune, blanc, rouge et bleu. (more…)

T-shaped Employees and how to grow it as an Agile Leader – one of the Patterns for successful Agile change

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T-shape is about growing skills in people that might not be in within their core expert competence area. When coaching leaders, teams and organizations we’ve noticed that building T-shape is often a game changer that makes a big impact – but it might sometimes be more tricky than you think.

This is one of the 27 patterns for Successful Agile Change that you can download for free here >

When transforming to an Agile organization we often move from expert teams to cross functional teams. Growing t-shape is a way to enable the cross functional team to collaborate better and it helps them to work as a team instead of a group, meaning solving problems together instead of working as a mini-waterfall within the team. This helps the team become high performance and enables them to innovate and create better solutions.

Resistance to sharing competence and what to do about it

My experience is that organizations that have a strong expert culture may have more difficulties to become T-shape. Since you then might also need to change the culture from a hero culture to a team-playing culture, it can take some time. People might also struggle to keep their expert role since it makes them feel safe and perhaps it has also previously been the only way to make a career, get higher pay as well as also informal power. Changes might then be needed in how the structures are set up around roles and responsibilities before you start the coaching around T-shape.

In many organizations who want to enable high performance teams and T-shape, titels and roles are changed to simply “team members”, and instead we talk about competences, which is your T-shape. As a leader, you could support by help showing how the skill and performance of the team is more important than the expertise of individuals by perhaps celebrating as one team instead of highlighting individual performance.

Different leadership styles for developing skills in employees

In the Harvard Business Review I found this article that describes the research done on leaders and how they grow competence. According to their research there are 4 different leadership styles for developing skills in employees.

The different coaching styles of a leader: (more…)

Updated Free Agile Pattern Cards – Now with 5 more Patterns

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Free Pattern cards for Agile Change - 5 new

Our popular free Pattern Cards for successful Agile Change are now updated with 5 more patterns, totally 27 cards.

So far over 500 downloads + handouts of 400 physical printed cards and reports from people using them shows they bring value and enable structured conversations in leadership teams no matter what type of organization.

Free Download of the Pattern Cards For Successful Agile Change (PDF) >

UPDATE:
– Stable Teams
– Reflection
– T-shaped People
– Distributed Decision Making
– Impediments Removal

Feel free to download and use them. Here you’ll also find examples of how to use them >

(more…)

Dags att kasta gamla synder på valborgsbrasan

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  1. Idag på Valborgsmässoafton är det tradition att bränna upp det gamla och välkomna in det nya!

Det är i den andan jag själv vill se den artikel som Catrin Brodin tillsammans med ett tjugotal av oss som arbetar med förändringsledning har skrivit. Du hittar artikeln här. Vi sätter sökarljuset på vad som fungerar inom förändringsledning och vad som inte gör det – och helst borde ha slängts på valborgsbrasan redan för många år sen! Några konstigheter är det inte: Bristande stöd från ledningen, otydligt syfte och mål samt underskattning av hur stor insats det krävs för att förändra. Dessa fel återkommer lika envist som Valborgsafton självt.

Även i andra länder där det istället heter Walpurgisnacht eller Saint Walburga’s Eve hittar vi dessa problem. Två internationella undersökningar visar att nyckelfaktorerna för framgångsrik förändringsledning inte skiljer sig åt mycket eftersom det är samma utmaningar vi alla behöver hantera. IBM’s egen undersökning här ovan belyser vikten av ledarskap från de som sponsrar en förändring och en vision som delas av de som påverkas av en förändring. PROSCI som släppt sin Executive Summary of Best Practices – 2018 berättar att det nu är tionde undersökningen i rad där aktivt och synligt stöd för förändring från högsta ledningens sida toppar listan av framgångsfaktorer.

Kan en orsakerna bakom att det ändå brister vara att man underskattar komplexiteten i förändring och tror att det från ledningens sida räcker med att visa sitt stöd vid kick-off? Alla ni som använder agil metodik vet att det är ett ständigt utforskande och omprövande vartefter man lär sig nya saker. Kan det vara bra att ha ledningens stöd även längs med denna krokiga väg och inte bara i början? Dela gärna med dig dina tankar här nedan. Kom gärna och diskutera på något av våra gratis frukostseminarium om Agil Förändringsledning.

Flexibility in Agile and Activity based offices must be a perfect fit – or does it?

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Agile team seatingThere is a an increasing trend in big companies and organizations to go Agile, and of course that is awesome in my opinion. What is really confusing though, is that many of the same companies and organizations also decide to change to activity based seating. This is really confusing in many ways, since it will bring contradictory behaviors than what you are looking for when working Agile, and in the short – and long run, make the company fail to go agile.

Recent posts in this series:

– Free Infographic  “Get seated for Agile”
– The Free Report “The Agile Activity Based Seating Report 2018”
– Free PP slides of the report
– Video of me presenting the report (Swedish)

The only conclusion I can do, is that there is not enough knowledge around how Agile seatings need to be – nor what the consequences of not being Agile when trying will be (costly and frustrating). Or perhaps it’s that the people that do the work (and know about this) and the people making these decisions are too far away from each other and don’t communicate in a good way. Either way, it’s a huge waste – and so unnecessary.

I have several times been contacted by people working in organizations where they have had Agile teams sitting and working together with good results – and out of the blue, usually over a weekend or over a holiday, their office space was changed in to activity based seating with clean desk – and clean wall policy. The team shows up on a Monday finding all their stuff that was put up on the walls in a cardboard box and their 2-3 computer screens gone… These people tell tales about how their colleagues went home after that day, refused to come back in weeks. Their delivery pace went down with below 50% of normal and quality of work and innovation went down the drain totally. Everything the team had fought for to build up was erased over night.

Flexibility in Agile and Activity based offices must be a perfect fit – or does it?

Organizations that decide to go with activity based offices probably have the best of intentions. I’m sure of that, people usually do. But I’m also sure they need better advisory. It might look as if the flexibility in both agile and activity based office works really well together (and this is an argument I’ve heard sales people for these solution use). And it might look like you will save a lot of money, not having as many seatings as before, and it might look like people will get to know each other a lot better when they move around every day, and you might think they will love their new updated beautiful workplace with special designed chairs for people who like to sit alone not seeing or being seen by any one else. But it´s all wrong – so wrong – at least if you want collaboration, innovation and high speed in your organization and culture. Flexibility is not always what you need after all. (more…)

Pattern Cards For Successful Agile Change – Free Download

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Many times while coaching people we want to be able to quickly give people new perspectives, food for thought and bring people together around shared understandings and common goals. Thats why we created these pattern cards for successful Agile transformation, to enable engaging discussions. Please feel free to download and use them you too if you feel they can help you to create valuable dialogues too.

You can also purchase these decks of cards in our Online Shop >

EDIT: Updated Pattern Cards (May 8) with 5 additional patterns

– Stable Teams
– Reflection
– T-shaped People
– Distributed Decision Making
– Impediments Removal

Free Download of the Pattern Cards For Successful Agile Change (PDF) >

The different cards are visualizing patterns that we have seen to be the most important to succeed with Agile transformation and scaling Agile organizations.

patterns for successful Agile change

Suggestion of how to use the pattern cards

You can probably use them in many different ways. Here is how we have used them with leadership teams most of the times.

Group people in smaller groups, 3-5 people. Give them a time box of 10-15 min to prioritize the 5 cards they find would bring the most value to focus on in the next period (3 – 6 months perhaps). (more…)

Agile Leadership in a Nutshell – Free Poster

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When Agile becomes something for the whole organization leadership needs to adapt to support Agile values and principles. Take the opportunity to give energy and grow a leadership that supports an organization fit for the future. Let’s build an Agile Mindset that can change how leaders act in their daily activities, how they lead people and business, form organizations and governance.

Free Download of the English Agile leadership in a Nutshell poster in High resolution (PDF)

French Translation of this poster >

Portuguese Translation of this poster >

Spanish Translation of this poster >

Italian Translation of this poster >

Turkish Translation of this poster >

German Translation of this poster >

German Translation of this poster (school) >

Buy printed A1 poster >

EDIT 2021: The poster is now updated to ver 1.2 with some improvements and better connection to transformational leadership and theory X and Y.

This poster is for me a way to visualize key concepts for how to lead with an Agile Mindset. At Dandy People we use it in our Agile coaching and training. We hope you as well can have use for it in your work. Please let us know if you have any feedback or questions on this poster.

To Lead in Complexity

The basis for Agile leadership is that we need to have a leadership that works in complexity – that support flexibility, transparency, collaboration and authonomy to enable the “workers” to make smart tactical and operative decisions to reach well defined impact goals. There are several common leadership concepts that support this kind of leadership;

  • Catalyst Leadership
  • Management 3.0
  • Systems Thinking
  • Servant Leadership

Three leadership Styles

In the poster there are three leadership styles visualized;

  • Catalyst Leadership (Best for Agile)
  • Achiever
  • Expert

The infographic contains numerous of illustrations to visualize some of the behaviours of each leadership style. I believe (without perhaps any support from research) that you can change leadership style to become a Catalyst Leader if  you make this decision, practice and work on it. I also believe that the environment we live and act in shapes how we behave and what we might see as good leadership.

Agile Mindset and what it might mean in Reality

When you understand that Agile actually is a way of thinking, a mindset, and not a process ot tools, it usually unlocks the “next level” in your game. But many leaders might find it quite difficult to put the Agile mindset to practice in reality. What does it really mean for governance? How do we build organizations, create good salary models, plan our projects, grow our staffs knowledge, build teams…? I have covered just a tiny part of that in this poster, the list could go on forever I know.

Need Coaching and Training for Agile Leadership?
Coaching Agile Leadership

If you need help to reshape the leadership in your organization to support your Agile journey, let us know and we’ll happily join forces with you to coach and train your managers and every one else who can become leaders. (more…)

Agile User Experience in Nutshell- with a Dash of Lean UX – Free Poster

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Many Agile teams are struggling to connect user experience and the design process with Agile ways of working and often Scrum. In this Poster (and post) I´m trying to describe the connection, and how you can collaborate in the team to learn more about user needs and solutions to solve real user problems together. I´ve been using this poster for over a year in my combined PO and UX training (Build the Right Product – Innovation through Collaboration & Design Thinking) and in my Agile coaching.

Download the Agile User Experience in a Nutshell in high resolution (PDF) >

Download in Portuguese >

Download in Spanish >

Download in Turkish >

Buy printed A1 poster >

Agile User Experience in a Nutshell Poster

My hope is that this poster might give some guidance in how User Experience can work in an Agile setup in combination with the posters; Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell and Agile in a Nutshell (with a spice of Lean UX).

What does UX mean?

UX stands for User Experience. Basically, the expected and needed user experience of the service or digital product to meet user and business goals. To connect user needs and business goals is basic when working with user experience, it is basic to meet users and understand who they are – and involve and understand stakeholders. Any team can work with UX as long as they get to do this, and have the methods and processes to do it in a structured and effective way. (more…)

Translated to Russian – Agile in a Nutshell Poster

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Great news! The Agile in a Nutshell poster is now also available in Russian thanks to Alexey Krivitsky. Thank you so much Alexey for your help 🙂

This poster has already been downloaded almost 20.000 times only in English since October 2016 when I published it for the first time. Here you find all the other languages that it has been translated to, as well as a free Power Point with the graphics.

Here you can Download the Agile in a Nutshell Russian poster for Free (PDF)Russian agile in a nutshell

All other Agile posters in all languages can be found through the Agile Explained Infographic Collection page >

Here you can visit Alexeys blog (scrum.ua) with the Russian poster as well >

Free to download, use and share

The poster and other content 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 (Chinese is coming soon) 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:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
This license is acceptable for Free Cultural Works.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

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.

Agile transformation in a fail safe environment – Prototyping Teams

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This is a story how we used a two day workshop with a management group to help them find out next steps needed in their Agile Transformation.

We knew the client well and had been working with them for some time. It was now time to discuss their progress and potential next steps.

Background

They had Scrum teams up and running, each team with their own product owner. Each team covering one part of their product. Earlier they had discussed and identified their challenges and problems so they where known and a good input to the workshop.

The Workshop

Overall agenda for these two days:

  • Purpose, why
  • Vision
  • Experiencing Feature teams
  • LeSS introduction
  • Guiding Principles for the product organization
  • Prototyping new Agile teams
  • Decisions and next steps

(more…)

Transforming to a People- and Innovation Friendly Organisation using Agile

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Is your organisation starting to feel out of date, making you slow and ineffective? Do you need to evaluate what type of organisation you should have instead to speed up your development? Then you probably want to continue and read the full article. This post also contains Workshop agenda & Free Templates.

Agile Coaches

The three amigos of Agile coaches on the set is so much better than one 😀
Thank you Viktor and Stefan!

Many companies and organisations who are working in a complex fast moving domain find themselves growing out of their existing organization and ways of working. These organisations may suffer from problems like long lead times, inability to innovate or quality issues. Feeling left behind when new companies move faster. People in these organizations often find themselves being stressed out, attending too many meetings, communicating to everyone and no one about everything, and often little or even no time to be creative, collaborate with team members and stakeholders or to do the actual work.

To become great product organisations fit for people and enable innovation, short lead times and high quality we apply Agile and Lean thinking and ways of working in order to solve existing problems step by step – also called Agile Change Management. We believe that change has to happen on an individual level, as well as a system level, and it can only be sustainable and successful if it comes from intrinsic motivation.

To enable organizations to improve and reorganize as easy as possible we needed a collaborative way to evaluate the existing organization, what works well and what not, and at the same time learn how it could work instead in the future. We also wanted to build on intrinsic motivation and enable people to make the decisions needed based on actual knowledge. That’s why we created this product organisation evaluation workshop and method. It worked really well and we would love to share it with the Agile community to see if it might could be of use to more people.

Outlines of the workshop

This workshop is:

  • Experienced based
  • Collaborative
  • Visual
  • Data driven
  • Probe, sense, respond – prototype based

(more…)

Translated to German – Agile in a Nutshell Poster

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Thanks to Mirko Kleiner at Flowdays the Agile in a Nutshell poster has now been translated to German as well! Hope you find it useful, and thank you so much Mirko for your friendship and help with this!

Here you can Download the German poster for Free as a high-resolution PDF >
AGile in a Nutshell German poster

German Agile in a Nutshell poster

All other Agile posters in all languages can be found through the Agile Explained Infographic Collection page >

Free to download, use and share

The poster and other content 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 (Chinese is coming soon) 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:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
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Agile Change Management in a Nutshell – Free Poster

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The updated version 1.1 of the poster “Agile Change Management in a Nutshell” is now available for free download! This poster is the latest addition to the “In a Nutshell” series!

The Agile Change Management in a Nutshell poster is available for free download here >

Free download: Portuguese >
Free download: Spanish >

Buy printed A1 poster >
You are welcome to share this link and print as many posters as you want.

Free Agile Change Management Poster

While many change management methodologies contain proven methods based on substantial experience and research, not enough is done to cater for the highly complex nature of change where you can’t simply “plan-and-execute” and get it right the first time. An iterative approach with rapid feedback and gradual learning is therefore suggested here.

Similarly, lean or agile methods risk being not deep enough if only focusing on basic PDCA. We want to include best practice in defining the problem to be solved together with assessment of the change capability of the people and organization going through the change. To assert that improvement has happened beyond a shadow of a doubt in a high-variation environments, statistical significance between baseline and new performance data should be established.

At Dandy People we have therefore combined the best parts of both approaches into what we label Agile Change Management and condensed it into one poster. At the center is the Agile Change Process which is made up of an outer circle representing a change that is needed. It contains both a people track and a system track as both dimensions are needed for change to happen quickly and ensure return on investment. The inner circle is the iterative discovery of what actually works in terms of bringing people and system to work in a new and improved way. The poster is based on concepts from Lean, Agile, DMAIC and the Standard by ACMP.

Change Management - Mia o Joel

Free to download, use and share

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The Speedboat Retrospective – Free Download of Poster

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The online version that you can run in Google Drive via Google Slide.

The speedboat format for retrospectives is something I like a lot and have used with teams or even whole organizations (divided into teams). I find it to be a good way for the team to think individually, and then collaborate and define solutions for their problems through visualization. Visualization helps the team to more easily figure out what problems they should solve them selves, and what problems needs to be solved through collaboration between the teams, and what they need to ask management to help with. Some Agile coaches or Scrum Masters only highlight the negative on retrospectives, I believe it is a great thing to focus on the positive and also help the team take action more easily on real issues. It´s the teams responsibility to handle issues within the team, the Agile Coach/Scrum Masters job is to give them the capabilities to do that (not to do it for them).

Download the speedboat retrospective poster in high resolution (PDF) here >

Download the speedboat retrospective Power Point here (instructions and online retro space)>

Free Mural template for this workshop >speedboat retrospective

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The Lean Business Strategy & Tactics Dialogue Board – Free Download

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This is a dialogue board, created to facilitate good discussions around business strategy and tactics in a startup. At Dandy People we are using it to start up our consulting business, but it can be used by any type of organisation, or part of an organisation that wants to improve their customer focus, culture, leadership and take action as a team.

Building in Illustrator

At Dandy people we like to build our new business in a way that involves and inspires the people in our organization. To facilitate the discussions we wanted to have on our first mini-conference 2 months after starting up our shop, and after hiring 2 new people, I did this Lean Business Strategy & Tactics Dialogue Board. Off course we had already done som strategy and tactics work already before we started our company, but we felt that we wanted to be transparent and bring our new Dandys onboard with the idea of the company to enable them to feel as involved and motivated as possible. And off course, they are smart and experienced people, so why shouldn’t they be able to help us improve and grow? And I can just say that it worked like a charm 😀

Free download of the board here (as high resolution PDF) >

The Lean Business Dialogue Board

Feel free to use the board if you want, also we would be happy to facilitate the workshops with you and your team if you feel a need for that. Thats kinda what we do at Dandy People 😀

The board consist of 3 areas:

    • Business Strategy
    • Culture and People
    • Tactics

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Poster on Agile in a Nutshell – with a spice of Lean UX

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This is a poster I made for a Agile intro class at Hyper Island Digital Business class 2017 where I and my colleague Per Lundholm was last week. The class was as big as 40 people, and covering from a couple of experts to mostly total novelty, which is usually the most difficult type of situation for a teacher or coach. But it went well, maybe not all thanks to the poster 😉 but it sure made it a lot easier for both me and Per as teachers, as well as the students who could follow more easily as well as take notes.

Free poster on Agile in a Nutshell
Agile in a Nutshell poster - Free download

Free Download of the poster on Agile in a Nutshell here (PDF)

EDIT 1: Due to some companies restricted IT policies the poster is now available directly here in the blogpost and not in Dropbox. Thank you for that feedback!

This poster covers both briefly the background to why we work Agile, some history and problems as well as values and principles. It also covers the difference between waterfall development and Agile in two aspects and the most common Agile practice, basic Scrum. Also I added some Lean practices to the mix to add a more advanced level to it.
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X-team Silos Game – getting in T-shape

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Cross functional teams are complete in expertise but not necessarily collaborative. Sometimes team members hold on to their expertise too much and the team does not perform to its potential. This Lego game illuminates the difference when members allow themselves to take on tasks outside their expertise, being so called T-shaped. Play the game to kick-start your change and create collaboration.

This post was first published on the Crisp blog when Mia Kolmodin was a Crisp consultant.

Collected downloads from this post – updated June 2017
X-team Facilitators Instructions as PDF >
The X team silos game poster in PDF >

Playing the game.

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2 övningar för att skapa förståelse för varför man ska jobba Agilt och med Lean ux @ uxopen 2015

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I dag har jag varit på UX Open tillsammans med ca 300 andra UXare. Vi har diskuterat och delat med oss av erfarenheter. Det har varit givande och roligt.

Kul häng på UX open :)
Kul häng på UX open 🙂

Den här posten handlar om den workshop som jag och Anette Lovas från Expressen höll med 30 nyfikna personer. Vi gjorde två olika övningar som bygger på metodiken upplevelsebaserat lärande, och syftet var att skapa en förståelse för varför vi behöver arbeta Agilt och med Lean UX. Vi gör övningar för att simulera en situation och möjliggöra en upplevelse som vi sedan diskuterar ikring. Dessa två övningar var Sommarängen, och en övning som vi kallar “Simple, Complicated and Complex”. Här beskriver jag hur dessa övningar fungerar och varför du ska göra dom. Gör det gärna med kunder, utvecklingsteam, ledningsgrupper och chefer, på utbildningar, möten eller workshops. Jag har lånat övningarna av mina Crispkollegor som har kommit på dom.
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