It’s the last Agendashift roundup of the 2016, and what a year! For this one I’ve simply organised our most popular posts into some semblance of (reverse) order.
Leadership
I’ve written and spoken quite a bit on leadership this year. Agendashift is all about Lean-Agile transformation, and you’re not going to see significant change without leadership. I’ve also revisited Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership model, noting that it’s something much more powerful than just “serve the team”. If only he were read more widely, including in Agile circles…
- Scaling without cross-functional teams /Servant leadership un-neutered (November, two videos)
- It’s time to reclaim Servant Leadership (June)
- Slides for next week’s #llkd16 talk: Servant Leadership un-neutered (April)
Needs
If you’re ok with mediocrity, keep on delivering “requirements”. If you want to do better than that, get into “needs”. And no, just because job stories illustrate this point very well, don’t take this as a gratuitous attack on user stories!
Lean-Agile
This popular post helps to explain why purely team-centric approaches can get you only so far.
Agendashift
I hope it didn’t escape your notice that Agendashift is now live, with an integrated online/offline product and an impressive array of signed-up partners (awesome folks all)!
- The transformation map (December)
- What, no “standup meeting”? (August)
- inclusive • contextual • fulfilling • open (October)
- We did it! Agendashift is fully live (September)
While we’re here, I must mention our Slack community. It’s up there with the product launch, one of the most gratifying things I’ve had the privilege to be involved in. Request your invite here if you’re not a member already. As described only today (and not by me):
The Agendashift Slack is developing to be one of best sources of high quality discussion and learning now
And last week, about the programme as whole:
I’m so glad to be part of this!
Our LinkedIn group recently passed 500 members also. It’s not hard to keep going when you receive this kind of encouragement 🙂
Hypothesis-driven change
In my workshops and training I like to observe that Lean Startup – a decidedly 21st century approach to product development – borrows heavily from 20th century process improvement. And the favour is easily returned: if you’re working on improvement, why not use Lean Startup’s 21st century language? With a sprinkling of complexity-awareness thrown in (more on that later) and A3 (Toyota), it works great.
- Outcomes, alignment, and changes to our A3 template (August)
- On not teaching PDCA (March)
- A3 template for hypothesis-driven change (April)
Note that the A3 template described here has a Creative Commons license; adapt and use as you see fit.
Featureban
My Featureban simulation game (Creative Commons again) is still going strong! One major revision this year (2.0) and a few minor tweaks along the way.
- What does the coin represent? (March)
- Featureban 2.1 (unplugged) (October)
- Featureban 2.0 (June)
Clean Language and Cynefin
Perhaps (or perhaps not?) the surprise of the year: our most popular post is one in which I quite cautiously announce our integration of Clean Language and the Cynefin four points exercise into our workshops. Their integration is now well tested and we love them both separately and together! January will kick off with a short series of posts digging into this in a bit more detail.
Here’s to a similarly exciting and productive 2017! Will you join us?
Mike Burrows
Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, December 2016
Blog: Monthly roundups | Classic posts
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