Jochen (Joe) Krebs

I hope you had some fun playing this year's Scrummer Quiz, which we played from July to August. I know many played each week, to either learn something new about Scrum or to win an autographed book by JJ and Jeff Sutherland ("Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time"). Truly a unique prize.

I had the pleasure to sit down with Dan Vacanti, who has helped develop the Kanban Method and is the course steward of Scrum.org's Professional Scrum with Kanban course, and record this Agile.FM episode. Dan and I talk about Scrum with Kanban and how agile processes can compliment each other. We talked about the communities, metrics and predictability which does not come as a surprise as Dan is also the author of two agile books: When Will It Be Done? Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability More information about Dan, the PSK training as well his insights on Kanban on the www.agile.fm showpage as well the episode itself. Coincidentally, the latest edition to the Agile Poster series is a complimentary Kanban Poster which is now ready to be pre-ordered.

The simplicity and power of Open Space is stunning for most first-time participants. The opening the circle, 4 common sense principles and of course the law of mobility that brings two additional roles in an Open Space to life; the butterfly and the bumblebee. Many facilitators and organizers feel nervous in the days, hours and minutes leading up to an Open Space because they are thinking about the pressing question: What should I do if nobody proposes a topic? Of course everyone who has participated in an Open Space knows that this is not really a concern, as the marketplace of ideas fills up quickly and self-organization will kick in. In this rare event that things are slow in the beginning, the theme might not express a real concern to the group. Now take the simplicity and concerns of an Open Space and try it in a virtual environment? New questions come up? What technology imposes the least technical burden on the facilitator and the group? How can we truly implement the law of mobility and have participants become not only conveners and groups but also allow for bumblebees and butterflies? How does the energy of an in-person marketplace translate into a virtual setting? Which tools can generate proceedings? On JUN 19th, you can experience a Virtual Open Space live in action from 10.30am - 3pm EDT. This will be the very first and fully Virtual Open Space organized by www.agilenyc.org. This event might be of interest to any Scrum Master and change agent because: See tools and techniques to run your own virtual open space. A skill that will become more and more interesting in the world that is becoming more virtual. Learn about how agile and Scrum could be impacted by COVID-19, which is the theme of the Open Space. So the sessions in the Open Space are all related to agile work during and post corona virus. Mingle with fellow agile colleagues and make new friends in the butterfly lounge or during sessions. After the Open Space event, please feel free to join the Open Space Experience session, where I will reflect on the event, tools and techniques. Of course the feedback from the attendees will feed into this experience report as well. Last but not least, to kick off the event, a 30 Minute keynote will set the tone and energy of the Open Space and a graphic recorder will demonstrate live (virtual) graphic recording. Participants will walk away with proceedings and an additional swag bag. Here is video if you like to get familiar with the concept of Open Space first: {"preview_thumbnail":"/drupal/s3fs-public/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview/public/video_thumbnails/XFLPO0l3l9s.jpg?itok=UXbSElza","video_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFLPO0l3l9s&t=42s","settings":{"responsive":1,"width":"854","height":"480","autoplay":0},"settings_summary":["Embedded Video (Responsive)."]} This poster illustrates the idea of Open Space, which is great tool for facilitators.

How this popular and empowering liberating structure can be used for retrospectives and increasing organizational agility. But can you Open Space be used in a virtual set-up?

In my 100th episode of Agile.FM,  I had the opportunity to speak with Jim Benson, the co-creator of Lean Coffee.

A few weeks ago, I had a wonderful conversation with Diana Larsen on Agile FM, and it did not come as a surprise, that the topic of retrospectives came up. Diana is the co-author of the book Agile Retrospectives , which has been very influential in many agile careers, including mine. 

COVID-19 and the corona virus currently occupies our daily lives. All news outlet report on it almost 24/7. What used to be smalltalk about the weather is now about this horrific virus. I do want to talk about the virus, but more in the context of agile transformation and business agility. If you are interested in the role of an agile transformation coach, here is a starting point for that journey. Before we get started, let’s define Business Agility and the Agile Alliance offers some useful help. In addition, I have prepared this summary video about business agility that uses the very same definition of the Agile Alliance. Business agility is the ability of an organization to sense changes internally or externally and respond accordingly in order to deliver value to its customers. - www.AgileAlliance.org {"preview_thumbnail":"/s3/files/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview/public/video_thumbnails/TxDt07l4f-s.jpg?itok=d5HZMjZO","video_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxDt07l4f-s&t=8s","settings":{"responsive":1,"width":"854","height":"480","autoplay":0},"settings_summary":["Embedded Video (Responsive)."]} In the context of the corona virus, many business around the world are challenged to sense changes internally and externally. Many, if not most, are also challenged to continue to deliver value to their customers and need to develop a response strategy. The challenge with the virus is very different to previous events or disasters. For example, the increasing bandwidth and processing power allowed Netflix to switch from shipping to streaming. The same technology innovation enabled Spotify and made record stores obsolete. Amazon evolved from book store to a shopping mall and just recently started with fresh food delivers. Whenever we hear stories like that, there are always companies that did not respond as appropriate are now gone. Blockbuster, record stores, retail and now even supermarkets are under pressure. COVID-19 is very different, it impacts almost all aspects of our life. Who would have thought that one event could impact school systems, entertainment, tourism, relationships and work as a whole. The breadth of the impact was unforeseen but also when it will all end. COVID-19 has currently no end in sight. This introduces a high level of uncertainty. Is the vaccine coming out tomorrow (I wish!), a year from now and are we able to create a successful vaccine at all? (I certainly do hope so) I remember news coverages from mid March 2020, when anchors asked “When are going back to normal?”. Only a few weeks later the same people rephrased their question to “What will be the new normal?”. These two questions are fundamentally different as the first question assumes that we will need to get creative for a while until we get back to our old way of doing things. The second question assumes that we are not going back to the same old at all and that the business world will look verydifferent. As a matter of fact, hardly any business operates “same old” for a long period of time and small steps of improvement take place naturally. I believe the new normal this virus will create will be giant leap of change. New business models emerge (e.g. more Digital Transformations) while others intensify their positioning in the market place (e.g. food delivery services, home fitness). If your company is facing the impact of COVID-19 with full force, it is important to know which questions are you trying to answer? Are you being creative to bridge the gap until the corona virus has been addressed or are sensing a bigger thread in the marketplace for the time after the corona virus? If so, do you have a level of business agility that helps you find answers to respond to the challenges ahead? How can you turn this crisis into a period of opportunity to be used wisely so that your company is not being passed on the fast lane by others. Take the Agile Transformation Kata for example, which uses evidence-based management and powerful agile tools to increase Business Agility in your organization. This might be perfect time to tackle this long postponed training or research and be prepared for the challenges right now and ready to react faster in the future.

Even though applying agile processes in that context is often a good and valuable idea, business agility is a much bigger term than that. It means how well an organization is equipped to react to market changes, merging customer needs or other factors that impact the business as a whole. 

The Agile Transformation Kata is for example such a practice that reinforces an agile mindset during an agile transformation, and through many reflection cycles allows to adapt to new emerging needs, like COVID-19.

The premise of Lean Coffee is relatively straight forwarded. Like-minded people that want to create or discuss something they care about use this tool to organize their conversations.