10 years after the introduction of agile methods, many communities are succeeding in their adoption while others are struggling or failing. Why? Many struggle because agile methods were introduced in an overly prescriptive manner. People were told to follow a set of practices instead of learning to use the agile practices and values to amplify their existing strengths and address their challenges. David Hussman shares successful coaching techniques he uses to grow sustainable agility that lasts beyond the early iterations or the first few agile projects. David begins with a series of tools to help you build a solid foundation: assessments, pragmatic practice selection, chartering and product planning tools. He then moves on to discuss ideas for finding a groove of discover and delivery that is best suited to your project community. As a full time working coach, David uses coaching stories and experiences to discuss establishing strong cadence while also building the essence of coaching and coaches in your community Whether you are new to agile methods or you are a seasoned players, this session will help you grow your coaching skills and your ability to truly discover and deliver real value.

1. Adding Sanity to Your Agility
Doing What Works over Doing What You’re Told

2. How do we promote agility?
(agility over Agile)

3. World Headquarters
Minneapolis, MN
Company motto: “all hippy, all the time”

4. Contextual Agility

5. DevJam Agility: Why over How
Creating Community and Common Vision
Form Communities (Chartering)
Composing a Product (Backlogs - Personas – Story Maps)
Create an Eco-System (Iteration 0 – Common Workspace)
Prioritizing and Planning
Product Releases (Releases - Priorities - Estimates)
Iterative Delivery (Iterations – Stories/Tasks - Estimates)
Iterative Delivery and Tuning
Staying Connected (Daily Standup – Common Workspace)
Tracking Progress (Task Wall - Burnchart - Velocity)
Technical Agility (Continuous Integration – Test Driven)
Delivering Value (Acceptance Test - Story Sign Off)
Tuning and Improving
Validating Progress (Reviews – Product Presentations)
Reflect and Improve (Retrospective)

6. Reframing Toward Sanity
Preproduction
( Getting Ready to Produce )
--------------------------------------------------
Finding Your Groove
( Getting Productive )
--------------------------------------------------
Keeping the Band Together
( Staying Productive )

7. Pre-Production
( getting ready to produce )

8. Pre-Production Work
Assessment - Interviews
Coaching Plans - Practice Selection
Chartering
Personas - Story Mapping
Creative Eco-Systems
Road Map Planning

9. Getting to Know the Band
Skills + Collaboration + Vibe = Groove

10. Change Is A Process
“This is what you should do”
Prescriptive vs. Descriptive
“This is what I have seen work”
Dogma Kills

11. Getting the Know the Community
Coaches are Producers

12. Assessing Each Gig
Discuss current process
(“how do you deliver value / software?”)
Get to know their perspective
(motivation, constraints and knowledge)
Discuss strengths and constraints
(community - products - delivery - tuning)

13. Suggesting Practices
Sprint Backlog Burndown
Sprint Reviews Sprints Product Backlogs
Daily Scrum Meeting Cross Functional Teams
Test Driven Iterations
Mura – Muda Refactoring Releases
Kanban Personas Iteration 0 Velocity
Kaizen User Stories Burnup
Acceptance Tests Chartering
Evolutionary Design Retrospectives
Continuous Integration Common Workspace
Domain Driven Design Information Radiators
Collective Ownership Sustainable Pace

14. Meaningful Groupings
Chartering Burnup / Velocity
Common Workspace Acceptance Tests
Information Radiators Test Driven / Refactoring
Iteration 0 Continuous Integration
Community - Teams Iterative Delivery
Products - Planning Tuning - Improving
Product Backlogs Stand Up Meetings
Personas Product Reviews
User Stories / Story Maps Retrospectives
Release / Iteration Planning Continuous Feedback

15. Respectful Change
Change must happen with people and not to them

16. Building a Coaching Plan
What changes will help and why?
(practice suggestions)
How much change can they absorb?
(respectful change - the right selections)
How can you measure the change value?
(practice tests – coaching guides)

17. Finding Your Groove
( getting productive )

18. What is Thing Called Groove?
“Groove is that quality that
moves the song forward”
_________________
“When a song has a good
groove, it invites us into a
sonic world that we don’t
want to leave”

19. Agile Groove Builders
Planning (iteration planning)
Discovery (story telling)
Hang Time (stand ups)
Delivery (accept tests – reviews)
Tuning (retrospective – indicators)

20. Story Telling over Sentence Reading

21. Story Telling Variations

22. Sharing
Coaching
Stories
-
Teaching
Through
Story Telling

23. What Are Your Stories?
Coaching stories?
Project stories?
Product stories
Coding stories?
Agile stories?

24. Sensing and Acting
( mining coaching indicators )

25. Discovery Indicators

26. Connection Indicators
- standing is the easy part -

27. Learning Indicators

28. What are your indicators?
during planning sessions
during stand up meetings
during reviews and retrospectives
- what tells you success is present? -

29. Keeping the
Band Together
( staying productive )

30. Sustaining Agility
Evolving Your Process
Monitoring Health
Empirical Skepticism
Dealing with Change
The Beginner’s Mind
Staying Curious

31. Challenging, Evolving & Changing

32. Empirical Skepticism
“Estimation is a waste of time, why
should we bother?”
“Our stand up in boring, do we need to
keep doing it?”
“Is our retrospective really helping us
improve?”

33. Beginner’s Mind
Beware the Expert Trap

34. Undamaged By the Past
- being new has its advantages -

35. Avoiding the Expert Mind Trap

36. Beware Epistemic Arrogance
The difference between what you know
and what you think you know

37. How do we promote agility?
(agility is a tool for the community)

38. Questions
________________________________________
Coaching and Developing Agility
david.hussman@devjam.com
www.devjam.com
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