Project Management That Works!: project manager

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Agile - Trends and What Does It All Mean? - Recorded January 5th, 2018

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00:01:06;00 - 00:01:30;10

Welcome to 2018. Welcome to another year of The Work/Life Balance. And we're hitting this year in stride. A lot of people are very cold in the United States as we have single digit temperatures across the United States. Several of my friends that I've talked to are digging out of snow. So we hope it's warm and toasty where you are. But we're glad that you've joined us for another episode of The Work/Life Balance.

00:01:30;10 - 00:02:10;20

We've got a lot of exciting things planned for 2018, and we already running are already starting to fill up our speaking calendar, so we will let you guys know about how that is coming along and keep you guys posted on that. We've got some exciting guests that are going to be coming up in the future shows here. We've got John Gates that is going to be on the show. Paul Cumming's. Nicole Tubiolo is going to be on. We've got Scott Ambler scheduled to be on the show. We've got a repeat performance from Todd Nesloney. If you've heard that one in the past we're going to be doing another live show from John Maxwell got Kupe Koopersmith that’s going to be on the show. So we've got a lot of fantastic guests lined up.

00:02:10;25 - 00:02:45;20

A lot of cool things coming but I thought I would start 2018 with just me in just kind of back to the way the show originally started. And I wanted to share just some thoughts and journeys as I had time to reflect at the end of 2017. I always take the last week of the year off. There are some special days in there for my family. It's my daughter's birthday. Of course, we have the Christmas and New Year. But I always like to take that last week off and just really reflect on what the year meant to me, as well as, what did I learn and what I see for the upcoming year.

00:02:45;22 - 00:04:00;28

And as I was doing that, I would say the overwhelming trend for me in 2017, professionally, was my journey through Agile. You know we've done a few shows on our job but wanted to kind of give you definition of Agile. If you guys are already starting to roll your eyes, please stay with me because I promise this is going to be a lot more fun than that. But, you know I see things in life cycles and I see a lot of cycles in it. I see a lot of cycles in business and we're in the midst of a cycle right now with Agile and Agile transformations. So, my journey through Agile began in a few years ago. I bumped into a couple of people that were on the forefront of this new methodology and they were saying things like you know we can't tell you when we're going to be done because we're Agile. I can't tell you how much it's going to cost because we're adj out in the biggest one that I ran into was hey we don't need project management anymore because we're Agile and obviously as a project manager for 20 some odd years that was very scary to me and a lot of things that they were saying didn't seem right to me.

00:04:01;12 - 00:04:10;13

It didn't sound right to me. And so, what I decided to do is start a certification journey in really understand this methodology.

00:04:10;28 - 00:04:28;23

And so, in this past year I went and got my ACP as sort of a practitioner through PMI. I became what's known as a certified Scrum Agile master which is a deep dive into 17 different methodologies. I got my safe certification.

00:04:28;29 - 00:05:23;11

And so really just did a deep dive and all these different methodologies so that I can understand what was happening and then right at the end of the year in, I won't say the company, but what was interesting is one of the companies that came up to us and said hey we're Agile now, we don't need project management. That was, literally I want to say four years ago, that they told us that I got a news article from a friend of how poorly they're doing. Several of the stores are closed. A lot of people are being laid off and it looks like a brand that's been around for quite some time is now going away and that gave me pause because you know again this whole adaptation of you know we're going all in on this one methodology. The only way to go and the end result is that that wasn't a problem with Agile.

00:05:23;13 - 00:07:19;01

It was a problem with the Agile list, and it was a problem with the way that they did the implementation. So, I wanted to start to dive in a little bit further on some of the details, and this speech and these thoughts started to bubble up for me when I started to do some reflection and really, what that is that you know…look, change is hard, but you can't simply change the words in and all of a sudden behavior changes. And so that's what I'm seeing. First and foremost, any in some of these large scale Agile transformations, they think that if they adopt new words or new terminology that all of a sudden, they're going to get different results. But the biggest thing is that you have to change behavior. Like, for instance, if I want to lose weight I can't simply say well I'm going to now deem sugar as a vegetable and therefore I'm going to lose weight. It doesn't work that way. I can't keep doing the same thing I'm doing. Change the terminology and then expect different results. You have to change behavior with it. When I started to do that reflection, I was journaling, and something popped in my head and it's actually an old comedy routine. And it was done by George Carlin. It was done several years ago. But it is always stuck in my head. And he did this comedy routine which was beautifully done. Of course, I had a lot of social commentary around it about euphemisms and, you know, a euphemism is simply substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something, and he went through this whole tirade. So, for instance he brings up and this is George Carlin, this isn't me but, he brings up the fact in the Bible it says that Jesus healed the cripples yet that that's a term that's seen offensive.

00:07:19;01 - 00:07:53;26

Now that we can't say the word cripple you don't use the word cripple. We now call them physically challenged. And it's not handicapped, it's handy capable, and he goes through all of these. Even says you know one of my favorite ones he used to use that he brings up is how airlines talk and the fact that they say pre-board. He goes, “What does that boarding before you get? You know before you board news that boarding before you board”. Why do we use pre-board. But the point still made. You know he says it at some point in our lives. Toilet paper became bathroom tissue and none of us were consulted.

00:07:53;26 - 00:09:09;16

It just became a nicer term and easier term and I feel like Agile can be somewhat of a euphemism for a lot of the things that are happening. And I get that, and I am deriving it that based on how things were perceived and presented to me when I went through training. When I went through training, I was told that project management is very command and control, and that Agile is very open in that you know in Agile the teams make all the decisions and you know it's very light and fluffy. And I started to get this picture in my brain, as I was going through training, that all project managers are just huge Godzilla lizards that are just walking through and crushing it, killing cities and doing stuff like that in everybody that's working in Agile or just simply, you know, butterflies living in these communal farms. Everybody smiles all day at each other and it's always sunny out. It's always perfect weather when you're working an Agile job but if you're working on a standard project management you're in this industrial factory and there's smokestacks coming out.

00:09:09;28 - 00:11:28;16

And life is horrible. It's command and control and the big boss comes out with a cigar and stomps on you. And I'm sitting there listening through these training classes going,.” That's not what I know”. But that's the way they're training people, and I'm sitting there going, “Man, if I was a brand-new developer or brand new person, this is is my introduction into I.T. That's not what I know. That's not how I know these things.”. So, the whole euphemism thing came up. You know for me the way people were trained, the way people are using things, and so I found a few euphemisms of my own. So, if you guys know Agile or if you know project management, what's funny is, as I was going through all of these, Agile discussions. It was interesting to see what was happening in Agile. So, for instance they were training, and they said you know one of the first steps that you do is groom planning and begin planning is where we all get together and decide what the objectives are that we're going to be accomplishing, and I was like, “Yeah that sounds a whole lot like a work break down structure session.” And they say, ”Yeah and then we have these things called retrospectives and that's where we all get together and discuss what worked what didn't work how can we improve how can the team gel not going to stop,” and I was like, “Yeah that sounds like lessons learned. That's a technique that we've had in project management,” and they say, “Yeah, we have these things called up where we get together, and you know we stand up and we say this is what we did. This is what we're going to do. These are the impediments that are in our way.” I was like holy that sounds a whole lot like a status. And you know we have scrum masters though and that's what we have. And I was like what kind of the project manager is like so what you've done is you've taken all the ceremonies that have worked for ages. We've wrapped them up in new names changed the rules a little bit. We call it a new methodology. Excuse me I said but you. So we've come up with a bunch of new words. They sound nicer. We've described a methodology that's butterflies and communal living and it's sunny always. How is that going to work.

00:11:29;12 - 00:12:56;07

And that's where the rub comes in. My point being is I'm not saying it's wrong; it's just a different language. But my point in going through this in learning this and reflecting on this is that these techniques have been around for years. So why have the other techniques not worked. Why have the other things not worked and Agile started to take hold. Well first of all Agile soul is that you know the team makes decisions. Well there's still got to be strategy to the organization. At the end of the day you still have to track something costs. You still have to have funding for value. It can't be just Wild Wild West and everybody decides. There are still customers there are still requirements. There's still accountability. So again, as we're changing these words and changing these terms and everybody's got a little bit of a different term depending on which flavor of aisle you're going after, there's still got to be something that clicks and works. And so we're going to dive into what that something is and I'm also going to talk about what really has been around for years and what we keep kind of playing around with and also kind of what has led us to this Agile boom. What are some of these cycles that have led us here? So we hope to hang around with us continue to talk about Agile. Call and chime in. I'd love to hear from you as we kickoff 2018.

00:16:00;15 - 00:16:45;17

We appreciate you tagging along on this Friday afternoon as we're discussing Agile; just some of my reflections on the journey I went through this past year and in trying to tie it all together with everything that I've learned throughout my career and in grabbing onto what's really happening in the industry with that child. I want to make sure that we're clear that I'm not negative towards Agile. I think it's a phenomenal thing and anything that an organization is going to grab onto to change behavior. Let's go. Let's do it. But I just want to make sure that we're being clear, also, that it's not this this new thing or this latest greatest model that is, you know, a brand new never been done before.

00:16:45;25 - 00:17:10;26

And I wanted to talk through cycles now to of kind of maybe what has led us to this point. Because if you look at it first of all I mean almost everything that's coming out now in any of these methodologies really over the last. I want to say almost 80 years is coming either you know from adapted model Walter Shuu or Deming right.

00:17:10;26 - 00:18:09;22

So Deming actually adopted his model from alter shoe art and you've got the plan check act model and I mean PMI is built off of that. You know six sigma has got some of that either that you know and all of that is built into that. But essentially you know you've got a four-stage model that says we're going to plan. We're going to do. We're going to check and then we're going to act on that piece. And essentially now all we're working with is the cycles and the waste in between. Now one of the coolest things I learned. You know Agile is again, though that's coming out of lean and lean six sigma is how to reduce you know work cues and values and the fact that you know in projects one of the biggest flaws is that we try to plan every task you know two years in advance and then we get ticked off that there's changes to that. You know how clairvoyant can you be.

00:18:09;22 - 00:18:50;10

But the point being here is there's frustration, and the frustration is that there's continually missed targets, there's continually missed budgets and something's got to change. And so if you look at the evolution of I.T. I mean when we really first started coming out we're talking 60s and 70s. We consider that the Dark Ages of I.T. If you look at this cycle, and look business would come in they describe a problem and then they would just sit and wait it took whatever it took people didn't really understand what was happening, we had limited technology. And you were just at the mercy of it.

00:18:50;12 - 00:19:45;24

It just kind of was what it was and then you started to move into kind of a stage 2 which started to develop you know around the 80s, the late 70s early 80s, when we consider that kind of a tokenism period. So basically though we were just redeveloping the apps that were already created, the applications and systems to take advantage of new database technology networks, were coming out. We were able to start to really start to use some of the technology that was available but then Stage 3 came around in this late 80s. It is really kind of the payback period. And so this is after years of frustration, lack of control, some landmark books came out by you know Charles Handy and Peter Drucker, Tom Peters in senior management just started to look at how they were investing in computers and systems and turned it into a cost center.

00:19:46;07 - 00:21:46;28

And it started to lead to a lot of these top down approaches and controlled approaches of I.T. And that's been leading us to this stage for which is that the partnership model, and people have been trying to figure out this partnership model for a while, and partnership is supposed to be a shared recognition between business and I.T. where you know it is not a cost center but revenue generating and we're starting to see some really good signs of that. Now you're seeing the ones that do it well and the ones that aren't the ones that are doing well, we're starting to see that being marked by what we call digital disruption and the aspects of social media the ones that are figuring out how to partner their I.T. departments and their business very well are the ones that are digitally disrupting industries that have been doing these top down management approaches forever, and that's where Agile is really getting the buzz right. I mean, to be fair, Agile is getting the buzz in the adaptability of the market the reaction to the consumer the speed to market to be able to react and people are trying to figure that out. Problem is, you've got some of these companies that have been running top down and command and control for so long that you know you're turning the Titanic. You can't really adjust as quickly as some of these newer, leaner startup models and that's where are you. Here we have this startup mentality. Well the startup mentality just means, in all honesty, really a lot of decentralized decision making. They've got models in place where Agile can thrive because they've decentralized so many decisions. It's easier for them to make. So, the issue becomes, you know, for this large huge, conglomerate organization; how do we start to decentralize or trust a lot of our employees to be able to make these decisions?

00:21:46;28 - 00:22:27;04

That to me, though, has nothing to do with Agile. It has to do with management philosophies and trusting your knowledge workers and understanding that you know, the whole point of me creating a show called The Work/Life Balance, and trusting your employees. And that's been something we've been pushing you know for 15 years now. That's not Agile and new and cool. That's just trusting your smartest people in the room to do what they do. But at the same time again coming back to the topic at hand. All right, what's the answer. How is it why is Agile really taking hold. Well first of all let's talk about the things I like.

00:22:27;11 - 00:23:06;21

One of the coolest things that that I think is taking hold of Agile, and why I think is becoming very successful, is that it does have a very clear contract if you do it well and you do it right. Let me boil all of the big talk and all the training and all the other stuff down to a very, very simple covenant. That covenant says that regardless of everything that's going on, we're going to allow you to change as much as you want to change. But once we commit to a sprint, which is a two week interval or a three week in a row of four week interval, whatever you guys have decided in your company, but most likely it's a two week interval.

00:23:06;22 - 00:24:32;18

You don't change it. So basically, the covenant is between an executive and either the product owner scrub management, or whatever, that simply says once we commit to this line of work then this team gets to focus for two weeks and just produce that work. So essentially what we're saying is limit the interruptions allow them to focus and produce value. With that being said, that one covenant, if you can achieve that can actually change an entire organization. I mean, let's boil everything else down and whether you're Tumba story points in estimation and all those other crowd. That's what it really comes down to; whether or not you can get the executives to say, once we commit to this sprint, it's not going to change, and we agree we can change future sprint so we can add requirements and we can do all this other stuff. But essentially and I think we need to make t-shirts that just simply say don't touch my sprint because once that sprint is committed it's done. So, the problem is in traditional project management is that those are 18 month projects, and we try to do all the definition and planning in the very first few weeks. Well, things do change in 18 months. Markets do react in 18 months, and the fact that we think we can be clairvoyant enough to identify all of the work and figure out how much it's going to cost.

00:24:32;29 - 00:27:25;20

So essentially using a Lean Six Sigma model, if you're reducing the work queues and you're reducing the cyclical time to say we're going to basically fund a quarter and we're going to fund a team not a project and we're going to work in two weeks sprints in increments and once we commit that's what we're going to do then. It's amazing what you actually can accomplish that has been the promise of Agile. However where I think Agile goes off the rails is when the very first entry point is, you know, somebody coming in and saying, “Well the first thing you need to do is train every single person in this entire organization and Agile that group is selling you training.” They're not really selling you a methodology or they're not really selling you a way to be successful. To me they're just selling you training. So, I'm always wary of that and six sigma, right? I don't know what value there was in six sigma to have you know that where, you know, everybody needs to be, you know, yellowed out certified look, you know, 60 percent 70 percent of those people never even cared. They click click click click yeah. Past the yellow belt. There was no value in that. Your higher value was in the people that were really going after the black belts and the master black belts. Same thing here. People just want to be able to come in to work and do what they want to do and get out. So, you know, committing to the entire organization to be Agile, you know, train top to bottom. I think is nuts. But again, that's my opinion and I'm allowed to say because I have my own radio show and get a chance to air my opinion for 60 minutes a week. But the point being, anybody who just comes in and says, “Let's train everybody top to bottom,” is selling training. That's what they're selling, not necessarily the promise of a new day; selling training that's what they do. But these cycles have continued, and their cycles are all based on the same piece, right? We're all still doing playing do check act. But I really think what's happening now is, through the evolution of I.T., people are. We're still at this stage for a partnership and still trying to figure it out. The ones that have figured it out, digital disruptors; the ones that haven't figured out are starting to fade away. And I think we really need to pay attention to some of these trends. So, having said all of that. Right. So now I've gotten out of my training. I've got now what I think is happening out there how I think we got here. What I want to do next is start to reveal to you some of the key trends that I'm seeing in Agile and where I think some of the big pushes are going to be in, even some of the things that are pretty advanced as far as when you start to talk about why we got here how people are looking at some of the tools and some of the advanced uses of tools with Agile. So, we're going to be doing that right after the break. You've been listening to The Work/Life Balance with Rick Morris we're talking Agile we'll be right back.

00:30:31;10 - 00:30:36;02

And we are back to The Work/Life Balance. Before we go forward. I did have a couple of shout outs.

00:30:36;02 - 00:31:42;04

You know we do want to promote, make sure that we are promoting the almanack book to which you can find at Amazon or at GR8PM.com. We've been blown away by the response to that book, and we're certainly appreciative to all of you that are reaching out to us. That book continues to sell very, very well that can tell different authors. Talking about Agile and scaling, Agile to the enterprise. And we're very excited about how that book has been performing. Also wanted to say thank you to John Deaver of Cinepear. If you go to our rsquaredconsulting.com website, there's a new video there on the front page that he helped us put together, and if you follow us on social media, all the videos that we've been putting out via PM minutes and all the other ones have been done by Cinepear. They did a fantastic job. We appreciate the partnership with them. I did want to react to a question that I did just receive on Twitter though one of the questions was, you know Agile seems to be more successful than not, wanting me to respond on that.

00:31:42;13 - 00:31:48;27

And I think that that's true, and I think it's like anything else. I think it's like a diet program.

00:31:48;27 - 00:37:22;16

You know as you walk through the aisles of a grocery store. You know you see all the US magazines, People magazines, and all that stuff and it's just littered with diets that work, right? Here's all the diets that work. Here's every diet program that works. But it's the same thing. I think I said earlier, which is if you don't change that behavior it doesn't matter what diet plan you're trying to follow, you have to change your behaviors for it to work. And I think for every person that they throw on the cover, in cover of said people, and for every great diet story there's, you know, 40 stories that nobody's going to read about where those diets and probably 400 stories that diets don't work. And I think it's January 5th which means that probably about three point seven million people in the United States that have already failed their New Year's resolutions on diet. So yeah I think Agile is very successful if there's a commitment to the behavior. I think any methodology is really successful if there's commitment to the behavior. And I say that coming from somebody who implements, you know, systems for a living. You know a lot of people look at the software that we sell and the implementations that we do as a cure all for their for their issues, and software is not going to solve, you know, core business issues that you're having it in. One of my favorite things to say is that we want to design to the 95 percent, not that 5. What I mean by that is, you know, most of our organizations already know that, you know, there's 5 percent of the company that are off the rails or are going to, you know, follow processes are that their problem children versus dealing with those 5 percent. They want us to design, you know, in our software a way to deal with them, you know, in the system. And I'm like, “Why do we need to put in all these checks and balances and notifications and all this stuff into the software that's going to hinder the other 95 percent and their jobs just because you don't want to deal with the 5 percent?” Yeah, I don't get that in. It's kind of the same thing that has evolved, you know, in I.T. departments if you look at I.T. in their evolution and we went through the four stages. But just look at how they formed and, even though it's supposed to be a cohesive group and a revenue generating group, they really don't run as cohesive departments. They run as functions and then those functions tend to run on their own and they tend to then, you know, work on their own and develop their own systems and then those systems don't talk to each other. So, for instance, you have a support group and that support group generally uses a helpdesk tool and you know they open tickets track issues and that kind of thing. And those issues could have development things. Well then your development team uses some sort of badge out tools, so they're using Agile central or using version 1 or Jira something like that. They want to work in their system and then your finance department has their big ERP and then you know you've got. Then your project management team and, so they're doing things by spreadsheets or whatever. But at some point, all of this information is got to compile and compare. And so, you know if a ticket opens up and support that needs to easily flow to your development, that it has to get in you're planning, your project managers need to have things that easily go to development, developers got to do it all it's got to tie together. But for years people have been buying different tools that satisfy just their need. And now there's this huge integration issue that's happening within platforms. And so, when we enter an organization and we're looking at what, you know, is a whole and as a business you start dealing with well, you know, this faction is not going to want to use, that faction is not going to want to use it. So this is just for us and I think that that is something that is really the next frontier of I.T. and Agile. And so I think one of the biggest promises of Agile in terms of methodologies it's forcing I.T. to not look at only how they plan and operate but also how they do dev ops. And that's such a large component of being Agile. I think one of the favorite quotes I ever heard came from Curtis Timely and he's the product manager for CA PPM, which we're very proud to have as a sponsor for us, and he has all the time. Are you doing Agile? Are you doing Agile theater, and him when you ask what do you mean? And he says, “Well, you know, if you're doing Agile that means, you know, you're fully ready to develop and deploy code all the way to production and that could mean even releasing code prior to you know the sprint end date you release on demand. That's fully developed and deployed and ready to go; Agile theater means you've just created Agile teams. But, you know, you're just developing code in an Agile way but if you can't deploy it and impact that an invaluable wage or a customer then that's Agile theater.

00:37:22;28 - 00:37:29;10

And because you know so many I.T. groups are so chopped up.

00:37:29;21 - 00:39:18;13

I think that that's, you know, a big piece. I think one of the other things that we're running into and we see quite a bit out there is the lack of readiness to commit to the methodology and again that's the same point that we were just making is that must change behavior. So, for instance you know we see a lot of customers that say we want to go out but we still want everybody to track time. And I know that's crazy for me, because up to two years ago I would have told you unless everybody in the organization is tracking time then you're not going to get to the productivity numbers that you need to. So, I was big big big big big on time tracking, and I still am unless you have a way in which you can track productivity numbers and things of that sort but in adj out you have that way. You know you have committed sprint's committed story points to them whether or not they got completed and velocity numbers and things of that sort. So, and there's even ways that you can derive costs we can even capitalize by story point things like that, and if you want to see how to do that you can pick up the almanac volume to book to we talk about exactly that how to capitalize and do capital and expense buy story point within the book. But coming back to the specific point, you know, we talk to clients who say, “

Yeah we're Agile but we want them all to fill out time sheets and we're like what then that's not an Agile practice. I mean then you're having to break out the, you know, teams to individual people. They have to track times to specific tasks such not an Agile practice that's not really Agile. So are we going Agile or aren't we? I mean if we're going Agile, then it's a team based team reporting team productivity and we are all going that way or we're not right.

00:39:18;13 - 00:40:11;27

But it's not we can't just dip the toe in the water where they're committing to the methodology and going forward or we're not. So, it's no different than, you know, and I'll beat this analogy to death; no different than, hey I'm going on a sugar free diet except for the three slices of chocolate cake that I'm going to eat at night. You know you're either committed to it and you're going to go after it or you're not. But those are the same people that's going to turn around and go, “Yeah we tried adj out but it didn't work. And I tried to diet, but I didn't see results so I'm off that you know sugar free diet.” It's like. Yeah. Did you ever really go sugar free. Yeah, I don't drink except for you know the bottle of wine at night. Come on. You're either IN or you're out. But you can't have it both ways so easily. That answer the question. And I know I went on a little bit more of a tirade than I anticipated but it's a good question.

00:40:11;28 - 00:40:18;25

I enjoyed it. You know. But that leads to the bigger discussion here as well.

00:40:18;26 - 00:41:01;19

And we've got a little bit of time to deal with it. As you're changing we talked about euphemisms; we talked about the cycle. There is the other big elephant in the room with that. And that's people started talking about story points, and I always refer to one of my favorite conversations I had with the naturalists as we were trying to convert things to costs, and we said you know this story points it's a two week sprint so we're going to end for 80 hours per person. Multiply that by cost to get to accosts, and she says she can't do that. So why when we do things by story points? I get that, but we still have to infer this to a cost. Well you can't do that. Why? Because we do it by starting points. So long story short, I came back to her, and it's like well can I cut you a check and story points.

00:41:01;22 - 00:41:32;01

Can we pay you in story points. And so, I think that there is the commitment to methodology. You can't tip a toe in the water, but there is still a translation that has to happen. So, I think the largest trend that we're going to be looking at especially in 2018 is the emergence of hybrid, and hybrid is going to be the emergence of the proper hybrid in the translation, because at the end of the day, you can't go to a CFO and show a reporter story points. They've still got to see dollars at the end of the day.

00:41:32;01 - 00:43:17;26

A company is still going to fund initiatives right, whether you call it a project, whether you call it features where they called, you know, backlog whatever. There's still got to be we are paying X amount of dollars to get X amount of value out. What I love is the fact that we're not necessarily funding projects anymore. We may not be funding, you know people are funding teams, but I do like the fact that everything is starting to lean towards value. What is the amount of money that we're funding? What's the amount of value that we're getting in return? Because if we start to use the term value and we really started to translate that term value, then I.T. can be referred to as value. And I really think that that becomes that euphemism that works in our favor. So instead of trying to be always happy, go lucky and change all these different terms. If we can get the term out of it being a cost center and it being a value center in this is the value of the project. This is the value of the work. This is the value of the deliverable. Then I think, when it comes time for funding and time for budgets and everything else, then things are starting to be seen in a whole different light. And that's one of the most important things I think that we can go after. So, I know we've covered quite a bit. We've covered the evolution of I.T. We've covered the evolution of my view of Agile. We've even come up with some euphemisms of all that has confused you. Hey, it's been that kind of Friday for me as well but I'm welcome to fielding your questions answering the phones. Anything that you guys have. But we've got one final segment we're going to, and do that next right here in The Work/Life Balance with Rick Marrs.

00:46:19;15 - 00:46:44;13

And we're back with the final segment of The Work/Life Balance for the first show of 2018. Already hit 2018 running. We're going to be in Louisville Kentucky next week, I believe with 21st and 22nd. We're going to be doing some keynotes for Sivertsen International right here in Birmingham, but we'll be working with that organization. We'll be in Nashville the week of the twenty ninth.

00:46:44;13 - 00:48:37;18

It got a lot of exciting and then of course I'm sorry but February 16th we'll be going back to Orlando to be with the international certification with the John Maxwell team. So, a lot of exciting travel coming up. A lot of exciting events coming up, so we hope that you'll hang out with us for all of those. And again, upcoming shows, we're actually going to do a panel interview next week. We've got a new book coming out. We had John on the show with how leaders improve previously. But we're going to get Jeff Grady and I believe Sasha Linda can help, if said her name right, but we'll make sure we get it right for next week. And Steve Williams, John Gates on the show discussing their book and their research on how leaders improve. So that will be coming up next week. We'll also have Paul Cummings which is good. He's got a great book that was just released by Wiley. We’ll be discussing about that on the show January 19^th, and then we'll have one of the coauthors of The Almanac. Nicole is going to be joining us on January 26 and then looking forward as well. February 2nd we're going to have, as we were doing this Agile show, we booked Scott Ambler who is really the founder and disciplined, Agile has got a great consulting practice around that, we've had some fantastic conversations, Scott NYE around this very topic that I was discussing today. So, can't wait to have him on the show and I've already prepped him that I was going to throw a lot of these comments that I've got around Agile and would love to hear how he reacts and responds to some of the things that I've heard in the open market. So, with that we've appreciated everybody hanging around with us. You know I wanted to give some closing comments around Agile.

00:48:37;19 - 00:50:04;08

Look, I love the fact the greatest thing about Agile, I'll say this, is that there seems to be a lot of passion around it. And to see passion and ownership within the development world and developers around it that I completely enjoy. So regardless of, you know, if you want me to, the whatever methodology you want me to call it, if there's passion around planning there's passion around understanding. You know what each other is doing and supporting each other in a team environment. I'm all on board. The communication around it in some of those ceremonies built if they're bought into, and people are really doing it and really getting value out of it as a teamwork based system, I think there's tremendous value in that as well. Those are some of the biggest things that I'm catching, as well as I said before in the earlier segment, the covenant between executives and developers in making sure that we're not touching this sprint and that we actually can focus and achieve and accomplish something versus trying to do 17 projects at once. When I started The Work/Life Balance, in one of my biggest, you know, runs for the last 20 years, is the fact that I think the number one issue that faces almost every organization on the planet is you've got too many projects not enough people.

00:50:04;24 - 00:50:18;13

And so, I don't care what we call the methodology. I don't care how we structure a methodology, as long as our biggest focus is that we are focusing on the people who actually do the work for our companies.

00:50:18;13 - 00:51:12;12

We've got way way, way too much work planned. And what happens without any kind of methodology or portfolio management is that companies try to start and do every project. And they don't finish any of them well. So again, I don't care what you call it as long as there is a profound focus that's protecting our most precious, our most precious, resources which are the people that do the work right. Those are the people are going to give you the results. So, don't sit in some stuffy room and sit there with some spreadsheet and decide people's futures, or go, “Yeah they can be 180 percent allocated.” Everybody's over allocated. Who cares, because that is truly what's going to disrupt your organization. And that's truly what's going to be the detriment to your organization. If you treat people with respect you treat people for the knowledge that they can bring.

00:51:12;13 - 00:51:56;23

You're really going to reap the rewards. And if you want to call that Agile, and if you want to develop a methodology that's going to expound on who they are and what they can provide for you, then that's the successes. So if Agile is the answer to that, for you and your organization, then I'm on board. Let's rock. Let's call it if you want to call it. You know some fluty-do thing, then I'm with that as well. But the point being is that people, at the end of the day, is where this success or failure of your organization is going to be, and how you treat and respect them is where the success or failure is going to be for your organization. And that's it. Methodologies aside, what you call it aside, that's what's going to be and that was the point of The Work/Life Balance in the first place.

00:51:56;24 - 00:52:57;18

Why I started to do this radio show is to expose this listening audience not only to different methodologies and different thoughts but also to people that we're going to expose us to different ways of doing things. To leadership. To different aspects. And we'll hopefully continue to do so throughout 2018 if you continue to bless us with the opportunity to fill the airwaves. So, I have appreciated this audience. I appreciate the following in the love that we get on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and all the other things. Please continue to reach out to us Rick A. Morris. You can find me at break 8. Morris and LinkedIn. You can find me at Facebook at the same as well always reach out to Rick A. Morris and you'll find all of us on social media there. We also post our calendar where we're going to be at rickamorris.com, so we're going to be speaking in anywhere near you. Please come find us let us know that you listen to the show.

00:52:57;18 - 00:53:23;15

We're also working on getting this show out on Alexa so it can be on the podcast there. So, listen for that announcement shortly, as that should be done in a moment. And we've got some exciting announcements that we'll be releasing across the show over the next couple of weeks. So again, reach out to us. We love you guys and we'll talk to all of you next week right here in The Work/Life Balance. You've been listening to Rick Morris.

Project Management That Works!

Friday, March 23, 2018

Radio Show - March 23rd - The Man Who Changed My Career - Rob Thomsett

The Work/Life Balance

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Thursday, January 25, 2018

Radio Show Transcript - Agile - Trends and What Does It All Mean?