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 blog post, we present a case study using the model designed to leverage the processing strengths and mobilize the brainpower of today’s entire (organizational) collective, which we’re currently calling the Grow/Plow Coaching Model. We have previously published a post on the Grow/Plow model that you can find here if you havent read it.
The Grow/Plow Coaching Model
As you can see on the graphic below, GROW and PLOW naturally overlap at the O and W. PLOW supplements GROW so bottom-up thinking could be integrated into a single coaching model we’re calling the Grow/Plow Coaching Model:
The GROW/PLOW Coaching Model for leveraging top-down and bottom-up processing styles(more…)
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 🙂
När vi på Dandy jobbar med att anpassa utbildningar till våra kunders behov så sitter vi alltid och idégenererar tillsammans. Vi har otroligt roligt under dessa sessioner, precis som vi hade nu. Den här gången hade vi läst en artikel som vi inspirerades mycket från i framtagandet av ett nytt spel vi gjorde igår. Nämligen denna: https://www.creativehackers.co/posts/the-subtle-art-of-fucking-up
Artikeln triggade oss, eftersom vi alla vet hur det känns när vi fuckar upp saker. Vi har alla gjort det! Vi ville göra ett allvarligt ämne som psykologisk trygghet lite kul också. Beroende på miljön vi befinner oss i när vi misslyckas, så får det oss att känna olika saker. Befinner vi oss i en psykologiskt trygg miljö så kan vi lära oss av det. Befinner vi oss i en otrygg miljö så blir instinkten att hitta någon att skylla på eller försöka gömma sig på något sätt, i vart fall så uteblir lärandet. Miljön är alltså avgörande och genom den kan “Backward law” träda in, vilket innebär att rädslan för att misslyckas blir en självuppfyllande profetia, och hur bra blir vi då på våra jobb?
Det här är ett känsligt och ett viktigt ämne för många organisationer. Grunden för om folk presterar bra på jobbet eller inte, ligger i om man har psykologiskt trygghet på jobbet eller inte, och det saknas i många av dagens organisationer. Många TROR att de har psykologisk trygghet, men det visar sig när man börjar mäta att den inte är så hög, och är det någon mätning där det INTE bara duger att ligga ok i en mätning så är det i den här. Det får stora konsekvenser för organisationen i avsaknad av motivation, lärande, självförtroende, innovation, trygg konfliktlösning, och antal ständiga förbättringar som görs har forskning visat.
Vad är psykologisk trygghet?
Vad är då psykologiskt trygghet? Det är när man kan prata om misstag man gjort utan att bli dömd, utan att känna att någon tittar snett på en, för om du inte vill se inkompetent eller negativ ut i en otrygg miljö så låter du ofta bli att dela idéer du har, du ställer inte frågor, du berättar inte för någon om dina svagheter, visar inte dina misstag, du gör så lite som möjligt faktiskt, för då kan du inte göra något fel. Psykologisk trygghet handlar inte om att ha det mysigt och gott där alla har konsensus, tvärtom, det handlar om att höja din röst och ta diskussioner där du ser andra saker, även om det är obekvämt och jobbigt. Eller föreställ dig bara skillnaden att komma till ett jobb där folk förutsätter att du kan ditt jobb, jämfört med att folk kräver att du ska bevisa din kunskap hela tiden. Hur lätt är det då att känna sig psykologiskt trygg?
Collaboration, innovation, and high performance rarely come from teams that haven’t had the time or the chance to get to know each other, build a strong foundation of common values, and a psychologically safe environment.
No matter if it is a development team, a leadership team, or an operation team, as humans we all need to go through this process to make the magic happen. And when the team works remotely, this is even more important and it can take even longer.
The “Remote Team Culture Canvas” is a way to facilitate and speed up this process by filling up together the canvas, using it as a common ground for healthy -and fun- discussions.
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).
I detta avsnittet så pratar 4 av våra kollegor om Tillitsbaserat Ledarskap, om vad det är, hur det hänger ihop med Agilt Ledarskap, vad det är i praktiken samt om vår meetup vi ska ha den 25/1 2022 som handlar om just Tillitsbaserat Ledarskap.
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.
I det här avsnittet pratar vi med Magnus Sedlacek, Agile Leader på Ada Beat om hur de använde Buddy Systemet för att bygga en lärande organisation hos dem på Ada Beat. Avsnittet är på engelska.
Vi är som bekant nyfikna av naturen på Dandy People. Efter sommaren 2021 var vi specifikt nyfikna på att lära oss mer om vilka utmaningar, problem och möjligheter som finns för medarbetare inom offentlig sektor – och så klart om det kanske skulle vara så att Agila arbetssätt och tankesätt skulle kunna vara möjliggörare.
Därför höll vi en designsprint en hel vecka i början av Augusti för att lära oss mer om tillitsbaserat ledarskap och ledning (styrning) och hur de som arbetar i offentlig sektor upplever sin situation.
Denna rapport bygger på svar från en enkät som lades ut på LinkedIn i samband med designsprinten i vecka 32 och 33, 2021. Enkäten har varit öppen för vem som helst att svara på. I slutet av presentationen har vi samlat alla originalbilder från enkäten med alla svar. Vi har dock inte tagit med den frågan där de svarande anger sin organisation och roll.
Det finns mycket stor förbättringspotential i att prioritera att hitta stödjande arbetssätt för tillitsbaserad ledning och ledarskap inom Svensk offentlig sektor i dag då hela 66% anger att det aldrig, eller bara ibland är prioriterat på deras arbetsplats.
Många av dagens arbetsuppgifter är komplexa och vi möter kontinuerligt nya utmaningar och problem att hantera. Det är en blandning av att hantera frågor som ingen har svaret på och som vi behöver utforska och att ta till sig nya kunskaper för att kunna lösa uppgiften. Planer och förutsättningar förändras kontinuerligt och för att lösa våra uppdrag behöver vi ofta jobba tillsammans med kollegor med annan kompetens för att få fler perspektiv och förslag på lösningar vilket också ökar den kognitiva lasten på varje individ och teamet och även kan upplevas som hotfullt för individen.
Hanteringen av denna komplexa värld påverkar chefens roll som förflyttas från att styra medarbetare i att utföra uppgifter till att istället styra systemet där medarbetarna löser komplexa uppgifter. Chefens uppgift är att skapa en lärande organisation där individer har förutsättningar att lyckas med sitt uppdrag och samtidigt strävar efter att nå satta affärsmål. För mig är detta kärnan i Agilt ledarskap.
Konflikter och osämja på arbetet har oftast sin grund i att någon känner sig hotad och använder ett flyktbeteende. När hjärnan går i hotläge får vi svårt att koncentrera oss på annat och vår analytiska och kreativa förmåga släcks ner. Detta motverkar samarbete och de konversationer vi behöver för att ta oss mot målet. Jag brukar använda SCARF-modellen (Neurovetenskapen har tagit fram SCARF-modellen som beskriver fem domäner som alla triggar hot – eller belöningssystemen på samma sätt som fysiskt hot) för att förstå mer om vad som händer, eller inte händer, i teamet och vad jag kan göra för att skapa bättre förutsättningar för en lärande organisation.
De 5 domänerna är:
Status (engelska Status) handlar om relativ betydelse för andra
Förutsägbarhet (engelska Certainty) handlar om att kunna förutse framtiden
Autonomi (engelska Autonomy) ger en känsla av kontroll över skeenden
Samhörighet (engelska Relatedness) ger en känsla av trygghet med andra – att de är vänner snarare än fiender
Rättvisa (engelska Fairness) är en uppfattning om rättvisa utbyten människor emellan
Jag delar med mig av några av de verktyg som jag använder i mitt agila ledarskap för att skapa en lärande organisation med utgångsläge från SCARF-modellen.
Strategy is only as good as its ability to enable your product people to make smart decisions. It must evolve to remain fit for purpose. For those of you who want to make sure your product strategy serves your people, a collaborative approach helps you recognise and prioritise the most crucial gaps to work on.
The last post shares the product strategy health check template. Here’s one way you could work with it to align your POs, PMs, CPOs or whoever is in your product org chart. Co-creation is key to a shared commitment and conviction. Start with asking your product people to identify areas where they want more context. You can enable them a little better, each time, even if the official strategy is still in progress.
Treat it like a Kata, returning monthly or quarterly (but no less frequently) to prioritise the next biggest gap you want to close. A strategy isn’t grown in one night, so this is something that you can make more robust over time, piece by piece. Each time, gather product people to add what they know, then dot vote on which field they most need more data on to make informed decisions. Then split into pairs or small groups, choose one, and work on making it clearer before you next meet. This way, your strategy evolves over time, can gradually be strengthened, and benefits from collective effort. Don’t forget to remove old, irrelevant info as you go too.
There are many ways businesses can organize to grow and deliver value, but not all of them are equally effective. Melissa Perri, the author of The Build Trap, acknowledges four primary organizational patterns that take very different approaches to achieve growth and value delivery, we have added a fifth pattern that is very common too, the budget-led organization.
Budget-Led Organizations
Budget-led organizations focus on long term planning and mitigate the risk of people working on the wrong thing by having everyone hand in their plans on an often yearly basis and having them reviewed and committed to. This is often a time consuming process, not only to plan, but also to follow up on how all parts of the organization are doing compared to the plan. Important metrics are often deviation from plan as well as obsession over if the work is maintenance or innovation (opex or capex). This type of internal focus gives the organization a locked focus. No matter if the target moves away, the structures are set up to make sure you stick to the obsolete plan. It does not allow new insights to impact what gets delivered and the organization cannot have customer focus nor compete on a fast moving market. Most times people in the organization spend most of their time trying to find ways to game the system to be able to have any success at all.
Sales-Led Organizations
Sales-led organizations work closely with clients to define the product roadmap, taking all of their requests, and sometimes customizing things especially for them. The challenge, however, is when it comes to scaling. Organizations with 50 to 100 customers or more cannot build everything uniquely to match the needs of each customer unless they want to become a bespoke agency. Most products delivered by sales-led organizations suffer from debts in all possible ways; product, usability and tech.
In this episode of The Agile Weather Report we talk with Magnus Sedlacek about how they used the Buddy System at Ada Beat to create a flexible learning organisation.
If you want to read the blog post that gives you a bit more insight you find it here
Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube-channel so you don’t miss any of our other videos. If you want to go straight to the other Agile Weather Report videos, you can find them here.
All product companies likely have a document titled Product Strategy, but do they have a real product strategy? Perhaps you’re in charge of the product strategy and want to test and strengthen it. Perhaps you’re a Product Manager feeling the consequences of a strategy that isn’t fulfilling its promise. Do you see any of these symptoms in your product company?
Direct solutions coming from senior stakeholders, without space for product discovery
Teams and stakeholders feeling the costs of context switching, working on very different initiatives, and spread thin
Teams caught by surprises, needing to help other teams working on very different initiatives
Senior product stakeholders unhappy with PM decisions closer to the work, even if the PMs are technically making decisions that fit within the strategy
Slick presentations promising upcoming, unvalidated features, rather than focus on opportunities
Alignment is crucial. You can get alignment by directly reviewing decisions, Or, you can share the appropriate information and decision making framework so that others can make smart decisions without the direct oversight. To scale, product leaders can no longer rely on personally approving plans. A leader’s role is to enable their colleagues to make decisions themselves. Especially in the days of hybrid workspaces, it’s all about the flow of information. Your strategy plays a huge role in that information flow.
It has been a pleasure working with a company like Unilever, eager to learn and curious to try new things. Of course it has been frustrating and hard sometimes as well, when there have been hindrances in the organisation, and some people have been busy working in their old inefficient way. But change takes time, and being an Agile Coach means you are to hold your client’s hand and help the client to find its own way forward on the path of going Agile.
When we had our first contact with Unilever, most people didn’t have a clue what Agile was, maybe some had some friends working with IT talking about Agile, but that was about it. Now, we hear that people are eager to get on the track of Agile, there is a pull of learning and practising Agile everywhere in the organisation! We got curious about what the main drivers of the Agile journey, the members of team Mountaineers: David Scholander, Jacob Jensen and Emma Lindroos, would say. We asked them some questions.
When starting up a new organization we can design it based on guiding principles to enable more Agility and a learning organization. We then might want to keep it flat, without unwanted hierarchies, perhaps even without managers. We also want to enable people to collaborate when needed without both chaos and silos, enable decisions to be made where the work is done, and empower everyone to engage in the development of the organization as well as growing the business.
This was the case for the tech company Ada Beat. In the search for a way to do that they decided to use the Buddy System as a structured approach to enable Agility and build a Learning Organization, and they asked me to support them with this. Read more about what a Buddy system is at the end of the post.
Case: Buddy System at a Tech Company
We asked our friends at Ada Beat´ to write a small case study on why they wanted to grow a Buddy System.
We are so happy to be able to share the Agile Coaching 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 🙂
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.
Mainstream coaching models don’t fully account for the unique processing styles that are prevalent in the systemic thinkers that organizations rely upon for creativity and innovation. As a result, we’re not tapping into and releasing the remarkable creative and innovative potential of today’s talent in roles involving creative knowledge work. Moreover, research suggests that many of these systemic thinkers often have attributes of ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, or other atypical ways of thinking. Given that everyone falls somewhere on the ADD, ADHD, and Asperger’s spectrum, we posit that unleashing creativity and innovation in today’s workplace requires a coaching model that accounts for multiple processing styles. We all think differently, and we need a coaching model that fits everyone.
In this blog post, we present a model designed to leverage the processing strengths and mobilize the brainpower of today’s entire (organizational) collective, which we’re currently calling the Grow/Plow Coaching Model.
POPULAR COACHING MODELS
All the mainstream coaching models we’ve come across are variants of the popular GROW model, which involves establishing a Goal, examining current Reality, exploring Options, and determining what Will happen next:
The GROW Coaching Model
Such approaches presuppose that the coachee’s processing style prefers to start with concepts, such as goals or the big-picture aspirations often discussed while coaching, before diving into the details. This processing style is known as top-down processing and accounts for how most people think. Top-down thinking is driven by cognition where the brain applies what it knows from experience and what it expects to perceive and “fills in the blanks”.
SYSTEMIC THINKERS THINK DIFFERENTLY
Systemic thinkers, on the other hand, often have neurobiological and cognitive attributes that result in a bottom-up processing style that prefers details before concepts. A bombardment of sensory information comes in and their brain takes in these details before moving into conceptualization. This processing style is often connected to what’s known as the Weak Central Coherence deficit. In our experience, such thinkers prefer using problem-solving approaches to coaching that welcome the sensory details underpinning the need for change early in the process where the desired future state can be emergent and shaped by data rather than presupposed at the onset.
THE “PLOW” PROCESS
We took the basic steps involved in problem-solving to create an acronym we call PLOW. The PLOW process involves defining the Problem (i.e., state the problem as clearly as possible and be specific about the situation, behavior, circumstances, and timing that make it a problem); Learning as much as possible about the problem (which includes gathering data like facts, feelings, and opinions); exploring Options; and determining what Will happen next:
The PLOW Process, which can be thought of as a generalized 4-step problem solving model(more…)
In this poster, I have collected some organizational design patterns from Agile product organizations at scale. The highlighted questions might serve as an entry point to different topics, such as design principles for the organization, strategy for growing teams and individuals, how to enable autonomy and alignment and how to design the leadership teams to support and grow an awesome product organization that delivers products customers love.
UPDATE JUNE 2023: Scrum of Scrum added as a pattern in the English poster.
“On the Cover” is a great exercise to define the vision for a product, service, company… you name it!
Use it with your team to define your vision. If you create one each you can then share your thoughts with each other. It might just be valuable to see if you are aligned with eachother on the big picture, but you can also create one picture together and build on what you all shared and find the next level together.
If you are far away from each other on important topics, talk about why and what that means. It is valuable to get a shared vision to be able to know if we are doing the right things and to engage the team.
Ever wondered what the business impact would be of delivering continuously in small batches instead of everything in a big bang? Watch this video and reflect if you could benefit from delivering in an Agile way.
This video is produced as a part of our custom-made training materials in Dandy People Academy.
I dag stod det klart att Karin Hagren är vinnaren av Stora Ingenjörspriset i Ledarskap. Vi vill gratulera Karin till detta fina ledarskapspris och samtidigt passa på att välkomna Karin till Dandy People! Karin är i dag Agile Director på King och kommer att börja som Agil Enterprise Coach hos oss på Dandy People i Augusti. Vi ser med tillförsikt fram emot att få lära av Karin och jobba tillsammans hos våra fantastiska kunder.
Utdrag ur pressmeddelandet på My Newsdesk
“Det känns jättestort att vinna! Jag brinner för ledarskap och har gjort det i hela mitt yrkesliv, så det känns fantastiskt att bli nominerad av mina medarbetare och sedan vinna, det känns helt grymt! Det är genom ledarskap man får saker att hända och det handlar om att få alla att vilja vara med och lyckas tillsammans”, säger Karin om att motta priset.
Juryns motivering Mottagaren av priset utövar ett ledarskap som visar vägen och möjligheter och är utforskande och sökande istället för dikterande och styrande. Vinnaren är en nyfiken ledare med stor erfarenhet av arbete i internationell kontext. Hon är både strukturerad och pragmatisk samtidigt som hon är en kulturbärare av rang. Vinnaren har skapat en miljö för aktivt lärande och visar stor öppenhet för förändring. Hon leder geografiskt utspridda personer och team, drar dagligen nytta av sin ingenjörsbakgrund och har fokus inställt på det agila arbetssättet.
When working in Agile teams, we want the teams to do usability testing to get quick feedback. This is the most efficient way to make sure we are building the right thing. The Test Canvas can be used to speed up the feedback process and enable more people to learn how to do it and join the process.
This canvas is created based on UX professionals practices and guide anyone through the process in a safe way as well as minimize the time to define and conduct usability testing on a continuous basis – it is perfect for building and scaling the UX capability in many product teams.
Usability testing is qualitative as opposed to a quantitative method
The purpose of usability testing is to observe users and how they solve common user tasks in a prototype or existing service to see if the solution is working well. We want them to talk out loud so we can understand how they think when they use it. We want to be able to ask them questions so we can better understand their mental models and experience. Since it is a qualitative test where we listen to and look at how users behave and how our service performed it is usually enough to test with 5-8 people. Once you realize nothing new “big” is coming from the tests you know you have reached the limit for what is needed now. But once you have fixed those issues you might test again on new people. You find more information about this in the canvas.
Usability testing can be done on anyone and any user type
Usability testing can be done on anyone and any user type. A user interview on the other hand is something else, that is when we need to learn if the solution solves a specific problem. In that case, we need to validate that on the target group and perhaps someone who is like our users and a specific persona. Often we then need to interview or observe 20 people instead of only 5-8.
Usability testing can be scary at the beginning
Meeting with customers and doing usability testing, in the beginning, can be intimidating. A good way to get started is by creating a safe-to-fail environment by practicing with people you know. Remember, if the team can test on real users once in a while and get valuable feedback, it is so much better than never getting to meet with any users and never getting any validation on what they do. It is also a lot better than only having experts outside of the team, or even worse outside of the organization.
We have just finished reading “Humankind” By Rutger Bregman in our Book Club so now we have decided to continue down the sociology path for a bit since every member in the Book Club really enjoyed Humankind.
So the new book in the Dandy Book Club will be “Dare to Lead” by Bréne Brown
Dare to Lead is also a very important book in the times we are in now, where we need to lead ourselves in a complex and ever-changing world. Where we don´t know what tomorrow will bring. The book will challenge us to lean into courage, put ourselves out there in the leadership role and be brave. Leadership isn’t about a role or a title, it’s about caring for yourself and your colleagues so anyone can lead and be a leader.
So far the Book Club has been there for us to read, reflect and learn from the books we have been reading. But this book inspires me to take a step further, to actually use the Book Club to do differently. I can do something different by using the Book Club for the purpose of trying something new for each week, inspired by the book. Maybe that will lead others to do the same. If you are one of those, or if you are just curious about how the Book Club works, please join us. We start by reading the prologue and the first chat about April 12, 4 pm CET. Join the Slack Channel here!
February 2021 was an amazing month for the evolution of agility. As a celebration of the 20th birthday of the Agile Manifesto, there was a month-long, worldwide, free, virtual festival, started by Scott Seivwright. It was open to anyone to join in as a participant and speaker or to host any kind of virtual event, and it was totally self-managed and co-hosted by ambassadors across the world.
I was honored to be the Swedish ambassador
Together with my team at Dandy People, and particularly Patrik Ekstrand who worked full time on this, we supported people to set up talks and events and promote them to the audience. A really big thank you to all the great speakers and everyone who joined in making new friends, building relations, and shared learnings! We are already looking forward to the 2022 event 🙂
With The Agile Weather Report we want to give you the latest, most up to date look into our Agile Teams and share their current findings and learnings from the Agile World.
Den här inspelningen är på Svenska. This episod is in Swedish.
In this first episode, the Pilot episode, we talk about Remote Teams and share several great tips and tricks for making Remote Work run smoothly.
Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel where we will bring you more episodes shortly from The World of Agile.
“-With my style of clothing and your company name, we would be a match made in heaven.” That is a paraphrase of my first comment on The Dandy People Instagram, sometime in 2019.
The Dandy Intro Package arrived a few days ago. Some fun and interesting books to start the journey right. And stickers of course.
And that’s how my journey began really, because after that I just started reading up on them on their webpage, finding what I thought, a company that encapsulated everything I had thought about and looked for without even knowing it. I barely knew what Agile was back then but when I found out about the Agile Mindset everything fell into place. I instantly felt at home in the Agile world because I already had the Mindset without even knowing there was a name for it.
So, I signed up for everything Dandy People; their webinars, going over their awesome “-In a Nutshell” posters, and some of their courses. And read A LOT of books!
Then I had my first zoom-call with Mia Kolmodin and the week after that, Corona hit – and everything closed down. So we had put it on hold.
The product development process is the end to end process we go through to make sure we build the right thing. As a Product Manager or Product Owner, your job is to lead this process, or parts of it, together with your team.
The process looks the same no matter if you are working in an environment or product with legacy systems or a totally new product. This could be a waterfall, step-by-step process if you are in a slow-paced environment where not much is changing over the time it takes to think, build and ship it, but most often we need it to be more of a fluid process where we can go through it in different ways, with different methods depending on the need. We often want to get from start to end as quickly as possible to not just get quick feedback from stakeholders but also from real users to make sure we build the right thing and solve real customer problems.
The keys to building the right thing lay both in defining the right problems in connection to your business goals and finding the solution to solve the problem. When we work Agile we need to get quick feedback along the way and adapt the solution as we go, and we do that by embedding feedback loops into the process. As you can see above the process the feedback you get in the different parts of the process should help you either move forward or go back to re-iterate your assumption or solution, this is what we call Lean UX and Lean Startup depending on what we are building.
In this chapter we will look at the different parts of the process and what methods can be used to be able to deliver in an Agile way, to get customer feedback, and to involve the stakeholders, team, and customer in a good way along the process.
A couple of things to reflect on:
– Where are you in the process now? – Do you do work in all parts of the process? – Do you, or the teams, often jump directly into planning? – Is someone else doing part of the process, or is no one doing it? – Do you and the team evaluate and optimize what you ship?
This poster with the overview of the product development process can be used for discussing your current ways of working, and as support for anyone to move from traditional ways of working with product development and product management. It can also act as a great support in planning how to work in the team together, and to create a high-level plan when starting some new product development.
So, it is time for a new book in the Dandy Book Club and the next book up is “Humankind: A Hopeful History” by Rutger Bregman.
Books we have read until now
We have just finished reading the current book, “Humanocracy”, and as usual we face the nice task of choosing the next one. So how do we actually select which books to read and discuss, and why have we chosen this next one you might ask?
This is a workshop that I have used a couple of times to enable shared ideas about product development with development teams. It is originally called ”Prune the Product tree”, and part of the book Innovation Games by Luke Hohmann.
Last Friday we used it with the Dandy People team to look at Dandy and what we might need to, and like to focus on and do next, and what fruits we think it might give us.
I love these kinds of workshops and formats that are visual and where we can use metaphors and get creative in our discovery and prioritization together. The full workshop was over 4 hours (and we didn’t finish).
We believe that well functioning Agile leadership teams are one of the most important functions of an Agile organization, but also one that often seems to be underdeveloped in most organization. That’s why we got together after summer and started to sketch on good practices and principles for Agile Leadership Teams.
We have collected some of our best tools and tips for cross-functional leadership teams that want to support the organization and build structures for Agility in this new poster. We are so happy to now finally be able to share the Agile Leadership Team in a Nutshell Poster with you for free!
On November 30 we hosted a webinar where we launched the poster and shared our insights and learnings from where we created the poster. You can also find the video on YouTube
Organizations are complex adaptive systems, which means we can not with precision anticipate all possible impacts changing one part of the organization will have on another. And, we cannot anticipate how the organization will evolve in the future and what strategies will emerge. Success, therefore, requires that we make small continuous changes as a natural part of running the business.
Having a clear understanding of how the organization is working from different perspectives is critical when moving from traditional to more Agile structures and ways of working. One way is to look at the organization from different perspectives and they will shed light on what’s holding it back and what can be done to move it forward.
At Dandy People, we have created an organizational analysis model in 9-Dimensions of Organizational Change (TM) that gives a holistic perspective and connects the dots across the organization. This is the best way, we have found so far, to create and sustain a Learning Organization. The model is based on the 6-Boxes Model by Carl Binder.
This is the fourteenth episode of our Agile Leadership & Management Series.
During my years working mainly with team, leadership and organizational development, I have experienced so many organizations lacking skills to both find and use the power that comes out of learning. We just tend to study what we already know, where we already are. But that does not lead us anywhere new. We need to learn from other people and in other areas to move forward.
Continuous learning is one of the keystones to be thriving in whatever environment and/or task you set out for. Learning is at its best when it flows through all levels of the organization, from the individual, to the teams/groups and, all the way out through the different parts of the organization. And many organizations struggle to find ways to set this up to work in a successful way and make it fluent in everyday work. So here are some really great tips and tools to get your learning organization up and running.
Becoming a Learning Organization starts with empowerment, e.g., alignment and autonomy, which creates an environment where game-changing strategies can emerge from people at the operational levels.
So, what are the prerequisites for this to happen?
Check out the graphic below to find the prerequisites to uncover 7 proven strategies for embedding learning into your organization.
This is the thirteenth episode of the Agile Leadership & Management Series.
A core function of Agile leadership’s management work is to develop organizations into what is called learning organizations, a term coined by MIT’s Peter Senge, which are organizations that facilitate the learning of its members and continuously transform themselves. Such organizations possess the capability to survive and thrive in the midst of rapid change and high complexity.
Learning organizations are one of the best ways to create a flexible organization that can handle VUCA in a good way. The idea for a learning organization is that people identify needs so that strategy emerges from the accumulated activities of peoples and teams. It emerges within the overall vision of the organization’s future so innovation and improvements add to the organization’s whole.
I have worked with many leaders in several different organizations over the years, and have come to learn that often times leaders struggle with finding out which role to play in an Agile organization.
Old school leadership was a lot about managing people to fit into your old way of doing things in your organization. A more modern (and Agile!) approach to leadership is to unleash the power that resides in your organization, by focusing your leadership skills on building structures and systems that enable the people’s skills to deliver high value at the right time. Here I have collected some of my learnings that I hope can help you on your journey.
This is the eleventh episode in the Agile Leadership & Management Series
Agile leadership is a transformative, development-oriented leadership style and it is the natural next-step to traditional leadership styles based for example on command and control or on carrot and stick.
Agile leaders are known for their ability to create the conditions required for unleashing the knowledge, motivation, initiative, and team collaboration needed for achieving organizational goals; and stay healthy as teams and people.
Management is a natural part of leadership because the system (not the people) needs to be managed.
When Agile leaders have strong management skills, they become known for their situational awareness, forethought, initiative, willingness to grant autonomy, responsibility, and ability to demonstrate flexibility and build trust as well.
In Agile organizations, each leader is responsible for managing one domain: either people, product, technology, or process. The interplay between these domains is where the functions of leadership and management coexist. Therefore, to enable Agility within an organization, it’s critical that management practices used within each domain support the Agile principles!
Not many people like being lectured. Not all people like being coached either. But everybody (yes, everybody!) likes games in one form or another. That’s why we’ve created an experienced-based free online game that teaches the basics of an agile way of working.
You can play it yourself or with up to four people, taking the part of a team member in an agile team working on a number of stories in a sprint.
The game introduces:
The look and purpose of a scrum board
How T-shaping improves your chances of succeeding
Why continuous improvements is a good thing in the long run
It’s free and we’ve made an instruction video on how you set it up (because it’s frankly a bit trickier than it should be)
2. Get someone to play with
After creating a “room” you can send an invite code to other players who can join in (they need to create an account as well). Want a video on how to do that? Here you go!
3. Know the rules
Want to know the rules? Then, we’ve got you covered! The rules are available in the game but we made this how-to video just in case:
You can also take the role of a facilitator and play the game to train new agile teams about the basics or let it be the start of a discussion in a more mature team.
After finishing playing, run a retrospective. Follow up the usual “What could have we have done better?” and “What did we do well?” with “How does this compare with real life?” and “Do you work together like this in your teams?” and let the discussions flow.
Playing with people on the same team gets you comparisons to real life (and quite often “why don’t we work more together?”). People from different teams quickly get into comparing ways of working and exchanging ideas. All great stuff, and if you don’t have time to finish the game know that you’ve already won!
In order to create an experienced-based game, we have taken the liberty to simplify some things and we might not follow all the rules of Scrum. But if you are looking for the Scrum Guide you find the 2020 version here.
This is the ninth posting in the Agile Leadership & Management Series
Leaders play an important role in Agile organizations, as they give direction to the organization, manage the structures around the Agile teams, act as sponsors, empower both teams as well as individuals and, perhaps most importantly, foster a culture of psychological safety.
In Agile organizations, a leader is responsible only in one area. Either PEOPLE, PRODUCT, TECHNOLOGY, or PROCESS. The Agile Coaches coach the people in all processes and areas to improve the value and flow continuously. This is the core of an Agile Leadership team, also for the executives.
The Agile Leadership Flower
The cross-functional Agile Leadership Team works together on moving the organization forward while working within each area supporting their people at operational and tactical as well as strategic level.
The Main Mission for the Agile Leadership Team is to improve structures and increase the outcome of the organization.
The next post in the November Agile Leadership and Management Series: “Are you really a Team?”
Sign up for the launch of the Agile Leadership Team Poster
The new Agile Leadership in a Nutshell poster will be released at the end of November 2020. Sign up for the free release webinar here if you want to learn more.
Making quick and good enough decisions can many times be difficult. Slow decision-making is one of the biggest problems in many organizations today. Therefore, it might be a good idea to find ways to speed up the decision making process. And, this “Decision-Making Canvas” could be something that helps you in your process.
When working in a fast-paced and complex environment, the trick is to make many smaller decisions based on current facts known at this moment in time. If we wait until we have all the facts, and there are no uncertainties, it will often be either too late – or the first facts will have changed.
Print out this canvas, or use it digitally, and use it as a template for making better and quicker decisions together as a team.
Target Group:Produktchefer, Produktägare, Affärsutvecklare, Arkitekter och utvecklare, User- and Customer Experience (UX/CX) (User Researcher, Interaktionsdesigner, Grafisk formgivare, Art Director) Alla som jobbar i produktprocessen, och som faciliterar den.
Vi driver även Moderna Ledare där ni får ni stöd med de lite svårare rekryteringarna & att tillsätta rätt interimsledare. Moderna Ledare agerar tillväxtpartner i komplexa och snabbrörliga affärsmiljöer.
