Agendashift December roundup, 2016’s best bits

Posted on December 19, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

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.

A blocker waiting to happen (and it works both ways) (November)

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.

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.

Two new tools and how I’m finding them useful (August)

Here’s to a similarly exciting and productive 2017! Will you join us?

Mike Burrows
Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, December 2016

Agendashift roundup, November 2016

Posted on November 23, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

I’m in Paris next week, so a little earlier this month! In this edition: Agendashift facilitator days; The 2016 survey; Øredev conference talks; A PhD study on Agile retrospectives; Upcoming events; Top posts

Agendashift facilitator days

The Leeds workshop on December 5th is only a week and bit away! If you’re a current or potential Agendashift partner wanting to practice some new workshop facilitation skills or you’d like to see what Agendashift might mean for your company, this is an ideal opportunity. Book your place [eventbrite] for just £265 (plus VAT where applicable). Existing Agendashift partners get a £50 discount, and any attendees who subsequently join the partner programme will then receive the equivalent benefit.

If the Leeds workshop seems too soon or inaccessible, there’s another one in London on January 19th. Register here; same discounts apply.

Watch this space for news of workshops in other locations. Hamburg early next year seems likely, and perhaps one in Scandinavia not long after. Do you think we should run one elsewhere? Get in touch!

The 2016 survey

Just a quick mention of the 2016 Agendashift global survey. If you haven’t participated, please do! See also What we hope to learn from the 2016 Agendashift global survey.

Øredev conference talks

Again, just a quick mention of something you may have missed: the videos from both my talks at Øredev earlier this month. Watch them here: Scaling without cross-functional teams / Servant leadership un-neutered.

A PhD study on Agile retrospectives

This is on behalf the University of Central Lancashire, the people who run Agile North (a conference that has been very good to me over the years). One of their PhD students is conducting a research study on Agile retrospectives and is keen to make contact with Agile teams. If you think you might be able to help, please let me know and I will introduce you.

Upcoming events

Lean Kanban France (29th-30th November, Paris)
Agendashift facilitator day, Leeds (5th December, Leeds)
Agendashift facilitator day, London (19th January, London)

See also our new online events calendar, where we also feature events supported our partners.

Agendashift roundup, October 2016

Posted on October 31, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

This month: Agendashift facilitator days; Private classes and workshops; inclusive • contextual • fulfilling • open; Upcoming events; Top posts

Agendashift facilitator days

We’re excited to announce the first two of what I hope will be many Agendashift facilitator days, to be held in Leeds and London on December 5th and January 19th respectively. They’re a chance to experience, practice, and explore the main elements of the Agendashift debrief/action workshop from the perspective of both participant and facilitator.

Book a place at the Leeds workshop [eventbrite] for just £265 (plus VAT where applicable) or register interest for the London workshop. Existing Agendashift partners get a £50 discount, and any attendees who subsequently join the partner programme will then receive the equivalent benefit.

If neither of these dates or locations work for you, get in touch anyway. I’m particularly keen to hear from anyone who’d like the opportunity to host such an event, whether in other parts of the UK or abroad.

Private classes and workshops

It has been a while since I have mentioned private training and workshops. After a summer spent launching Agendashift it will be good to get back in the saddle! My 1-day training Kanban and Lean-Agile essentials with Agendashift and the aforementioned Agendashift debrief/action workshop complement each other well; so well in fact that I offer the two together as a package.

There is leadership training on offer as well. Be aware that I plan to rework this around the “6+1 strategies” of our white paper, combining Servant Leadership with Lean-Agile transformation even more explicitly than is apparent from the current class description.

inclusive • contextual • fulfilling • open

One thing I never fail to celebrate is our Slack community! One particularly intense conversation last week really helped to crystallise things for us. Read the blog post that summarises what we believe brings us together: inclusive • contextual • fulfilling • open.

Upcoming events

Lean Kanban Central Europe (8th-9th November, Hamburg, preceded by an openspace on the 7th)
Øredev 2016 (9th-11th November, Malmö)
Lean Kanban France (29th-30th November, Paris)
Agendashift facilitator day, Leeds (5th December, Leeds)
Agendashift facilitator day, London (19th January, London)

See also our new online events calendar, where we also feature events supported our partners.

Agendashift roundup, post-launch edition (September 2016)

Posted on September 29, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

This month: The big launch; Tool improvements; Upcoming events; Top posts

The big launch

September has been good to me – Kanban from the Inside was published in September 2014, and Agendashift has escaped from beta almost exactly two years later. It obviously does me good to enjoy much of the summer at home instead of working away!

The launch itself exceeded expectations – we went live with more partners already signed up than I dared to expect and I’ve had onboarding calls in my diary ever since as new partners come on board.

There were no major dramas, not that you’d expect too many after a year or more in beta! The additional scrutiny did throw up a niggle or suggestion or two that were addressed quickly. We even managed to roll out some enhancements (more on those next).

Tool improvements

Grouped/tagged reports: in both the single-assessment review page and the survey-level charts page you can now sort prompts independently of the category to which they belong. Select “Tagged” from the Show menu to enable this. The old behaviour, “Grouped”, remains the default.
You can now “archive” un-needed contexts, surveys, and assessments. This has the effect that they’re hidden from view until you choose to un-archive them.
Additionally, you can mark assessments as “excluded” if you want to keep them visible but have their data filtered out from survey results.
You can add notes to assessments, with Markdown support
If you wish, you can use Markdown in your profile bio also (like I did in mine)

Meanwhile we have been making good use of Slack (see the #assessments channel) and Google Docs to collaborate on the wording of the prompts in the Agendashift values-based delivery assessment. You may remember from a few weeks ago a blog post on one such update (What, no “stand-up meeting”?); watch out for more of those in the coming weeks.

The workshop facilitation deck has benefited from further revision also, and there is now a facilitator’s guide (for partner use).

Upcoming events

Lean-Agile Scotland (5th-7th October), co-leading a workshop with Karl Scotland
Agile Nottingham October Meetup (evening of 19th October)
Lean Kanban Central Europe (8th-9th November)
Øredev 2016 (9th-11th November)
Lean Kanban France (29th-30th November)

Watch this space for listings of public training events in the UK towards the end of the year and/or into next year. If you’re interested in private training meanwhile (I do quite a bit of that, mainly in the UK and Ireland), check out the Agendashift website. In due course we’ll list partner events there too.

Agendashift roundup, pre-launch edition (August 2016)

Posted on August 30, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

This month: The big launch; Agendashift and Featureban on Slack and LinkedIn; Upcoming events; Top posts

The big launch

We’ve made several releases to agendashift.com this month as we gear up for the official launch mid September of our partner programme, aimed at anyone who is in the business of Lean-Agile transformation – whether that’s as coach, consultant, manager, or some combination of the three – and wants access to tools that are non-prescriptive and non-judgemental, but still thoroughly thought-provoking and action-inducing.

Expect to see some names you recognise in our partner directory; if you want yours to be there on day 1 and included in our launch announcement on or near September 14th, make sure you get your onboarding session booked! A number have taken place already, with more in the diary or promised.

Some of the recent website improvements are described in the blog post The big pre-launch release. We’ve actually made several more since then, including a significant revamp of assessment-level and survey-level reporting.

Agendashift and Featureban on Slack and LinkedIn

Just in the last couple of weeks we’ve started a Slack community – 45 members already and growing every day. Admission is by invite only (that’s how Slack works), but don’t hesitate to ask for one. We have channels dedicated to #coaching, #assessments, #featureban, and #leadership; there’s also an #introduce-yourself channel for new joiners, and a #launch channel for tracking launch-related activity, new releases, and the like.

The Agendashift group on LinkedIn remains a good place to check for announcements and blog posts. Membership recently passed the 400 mark.

Upcoming events

Sadly, I will have to miss Lean Kanban India 2016 (9th-10th September). This was due mainly to an oversight on my part, but it would have been a crazy time for me to be traveling also!

Agile Cambridge 2016 (28th-30th September)
Lean-Agile Scotland (5th-7th October), co-leading a workshop with Karl Scotland
Agile Nottingham October Meetup (evening of 19th October)
Lean Kanban Central Europe (8th-9th November)
Øredev 2016 (9th-11th November)
Lean Kanban France (29th-30th November), TBC

Agendashift roundup, July 2016

Posted on July 29, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

This month: Agendashift, Clean Language, and Cynefin; Become an Agendashift facilitator; Upcoming events; Top posts

Agendashift, Clean Language, and Cynefin

The Kanban Leadership Retreat in Barcelona helped to consolidate recent conversations regarding the use of Clean Language (the coaching tool) and Cynefin (the complexity framework) with Agendashift. Advanced versions of our training materials now incorporates both, as will the facilitator’s deck for the Agendashift debrief/action workshop (more on the latter in a moment).

Long story short, Clean Language is great for (among other things) eliciting desired outcomes, helpfully separating those from solution options. This in turn reinforces Agendashift’s role as a strategy deployment tool. Cynefin goes on to help participants choose a implementation approach that is appropriate to the problem in hand.

Become an Agendashift facilitator

In last month’s roundup I preannounced plans to make the Agendashift tools and facilitation materials available on a commercial (but very affordable) basis. We’re hoping to launch publicly at around the end of September; meanwhile we have been sharing an outline of the partner programme with our beta testers and other potential participants. If interested in being part of that first wave, do please get in touch.

Upcoming events

DevOpsChat Special Guest: Mike Burrows (evening of 4th August, Twitter-based)
Lean Kanban India 2016 (9th-10th September)
Agile Cambridge 2016 (28th-30th September)
Lean-Agile Scotland (5th-7th October)
Agile Nottingham October Meetup (evening of 19th October)
Øredev 2016 (7th-11th November)

Agendashift roundup, June 2016

Posted on June 29, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

This month: Servant Leadership & Lean-Agile transformation strategies; two preannouncements; upcoming events; top posts

Servant Leadership & Lean-Agile transformation strategies

The video of my talk ‘Servant Leadership un-neutered’ recorded at London Lean Kanban Days 2016 is now available on YouTube. The talk has evolved a little since this version but I’m still pretty happy with this one.

The related white paper 6+1 Essential strategies for successful Lean-Agile transformation came out some weeks later.

I’ve part-way through a new series of blog posts too, starting with It’s time to reclaim servant leadership. If you’ve ever wonder why it’s so hard to get continuous improvement to stick, try the fourth and latest in the series: Applied Servant Leadership: 4. Improvement.

Two preannouncements

I haven’t put class descriptions online yet, but I’m planning a new 2-day training workshop Strategies for Lean-Agile Transformation (structured along the lines of the white paper) and a 3-day workshop that combines this new one with the existing one on Values-based leadership, working title Transformational Lean-Agile Leadership. Shout if interested in hosting one of these.

I will soon need to have some better answers to questions on how to access the Agendashift tools and related facilitation materials on a commercial basis. Over the coming weeks I’ll be reaching out to potential partners to help plan this out. If you want to be sure of being part of this conversation, don’t wait to be asked!

Upcoming events

It’s chucking it down with rain outside but the summer season is upon us! Not many public events in the immediate future therefore, but I’ll mention these:

Agile North on June 30th (tomorrow!) in Preston
I’m told that if you’re very quick you might still make it to the 2016 Kanban Leadership Retreat (4th-6th July) which is being held Barcelona for the first time. I’ve attended every one of these (the Europe-based ones at least), and the “unconference” format makes for an intense experience. I can even trace the Agendashift family tree back to a retreat session held a few years ago in the Austrian Alps!

Into the Autumn:

Lean Kanban India 2016 (9th-10th September),
Agile Cambridge 2016 (28th-30th September)
Øredev 2016 (7th-11th November)

Agendashift roundup, May 2016

Posted on May 31, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

It has been an epic month! The 6+1 Strategies paper; SPaMCast interview; Featureban 2.0 and a trip to India; tool updates; accepted for Øredev and Agile Cambridge; the Agendashift blog’s most-read posts.

6+1 Essential strategies for successful Lean-Agile transformation

After several rounds of review (a big thank you to the review team), the Agendashift white paper is now available. Request your copy here.

SPaMCAST Interview

A few weeks ago Tom Cagley interviewed me for SPaMCAST and the podcast episode is now available for listening. Tom is an excellent interviewer – it’s my third appearance on his podcast and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every one. Hear for yourself: SPaMCAST 396 – Mike Burrows, Agendashift.

Previous appearances: 310 – Kanban from the Inside (about my book) and 224 – Kanban Values (recorded in February 2013, just a month after I first published the model).

Featureban 2.o

Towards the end of the month I was in the Delhi region for Agile Gurgaon 2016. As well as a keynote on Servant Leadership (with the 6 strategies), I ran the brand new 2.0 version of Featureban, our “simple, fun, and highly customisable kanban simulation game”. Drop me a line if you’d like the latest materials; it comes under a friendly Creative Commons licence and you are very welcome to adapt it to your needs.

Tool updates

As described in New feature: ‘Starring’ prompts at assessment time, we’ve improved the workflow of the online tool, making it convenient to prioritise prompts while the main part of the assessment is in progress.

Upcoming

I’m excited to have been accepted as speaker by two of Europe’s best-known Agile conferences, Agile Cambridge 2016 (28th-30th September) and Øredev 2016 (7th-11th November).

In June, two events closer to home:

Agile Yorkshire, evening meetup in Leeds, Yorkshire on Tuesday June 14th
Agile North, 1-day conference in Preston, Lancashire on Thursday June 30th

Agendashift roundup, April 2016

Posted on April 30, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

I was in London for two consecutive events this month as both speaker and sponsor, London Lean Kanban Days 2016 (slides here, video soon) followed by the inaugural Enterprise Services Planning Executive Summit. A number of delegates found the six strategies for Lean-Agile transformation part especially helpful, recognising several of the strategies and their respective pitfalls. We’ll be publishing a white paper on this topic soon – you can register your interest here if you want to be among the first to read it.

Not for the first time, we’ve received some very positive feedback from folks from outside of IT attending the 1-day Agendashift training workshop. Whether and how we choose to address specific new non-IT audiences remains an open question, but it is encouraging!

Stockholm (one of my favourite cities) was great of course. A big thank you to Avega Group and to Jussi Mäkelä for hosting two classes.

As mentioned last month in my post On not teaching PDCA, I have been using an A3 template for developing actionable organisational changes in the form of hypotheses, Lean Startup-style. I have now released the template under a Creative Commons license.

Upcoming

I’ll be returning to India next month for Agile Gurgaon 2016 and (we hope) a private 2-day Applied Servant Leadership workshop.

Out soon: I’ve recorded an interview with Tom Cagley for the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPamCAST). I’ll let you know.

Featureban is getting a makeover! I’ve tested the new version already and there’ll soon be a recording of me presenting most of the slides at Agile:MK (as part of a talk). Just as I hoped when I open sourced it, a number of people have used Featureban as the basis for new simulation games. I hope to be able to spotlight some of these soon.

Belatedly…

Inexcusably, I have taken this long to inform participants of the 2015 Depth of Kanbanland survey that they can now explore the results. If you missed that boat, join the 2016 mini survey now!

Agendashift Roundup, March 2016

Posted on March 14, 2016September 3, 2017 by Mike Burrows

I did the first (and only previous) Agendashift roundup way back in November, so there’s quite a lot of catching up to be done here. I’m in the process of setting up a mailing list also (a proper one with an unsubscribe option and everything), so don’t be too surprised to see a version of this show up in your inbox soon.

Upcoming:

I’ll be with Avega Group in Stockholm on the 5th and (thanks to high demand) 6th of April, leading our 1-day training workshop under the title “Lasting Lean-Agile transformation” (not mine, but I like it). Note: Despite the Swedish description and my Swedish heritage, I’m afraid I’ll be working in English. Ursäkta mig!

Later in April I will be speaking at two events in London, both of which Agendashift is proud to sponsor:

18th-19th April: London Lean Kanban Days 2016, speaking on “Servant Leadership un-neutered“. Save 15% off registration with discount code 1492-NXE-NJB
20th April: Enterprise Services Planning Executive Summit, giving a short talk then hosting a roundtable session “Customer focus: how to pay more than lip service and know that you’re succeeding“. Save 15% here too with discount code espagendashift16

Curious to know the connection between Servant Leadership and customer focus? Come and join us!

Note that though I don’t expect to be there in person, the espagendashift16 code applies to the San Diego summit in May too.

Survey results:

Since the last roundup, the 2015 Agendashift survey closed (written up on InfoQ here if you missed it) and a new and shorter one opened for 2016. We’ll be mailing participants separately explaining how to access the results but they should be easy enough to find if you want to log back in now.

Out and about:

In December I led a 1-day training workshop in Belfast as guest of the Lean practice at Invest NI, the regional economic development agency for Northern Ireland. We followed this up in January with Agendashift debrief workshops at four local companies, spending the best part of a day onsite at each.
Eight more training workshops, several one-to-one Agendashift coaching sessions, and more debrief workshops at clients of my Hivemind and Code Genesys partners.
A number of my beta-testing peers are doing good things with the Agendashift tools too; we hope to get some of this written up soon. Several improvement suggestions have been incorporated meanwhile.
I spoke at the Agile Derby meetup in February. Nice to do something in my home county for a change! One June 14th I’ll be a little further up the M1 for Agile Yorkshire.

Top blog posts: