Are you a software development team working hard to understand the Agile Manifesto? If so, don’t worry, it can be difficult to break it down and get everyone on your team onto the same page.

As you work towards creating a lean and agile team, have everyone read this article so they can see what it is you’re working towards. When everyone is reading from the same script and embraces these twelve principles and four values, you will see amazing success.

History of Agile

If you’ve ever been to Snowbird, Utah in February you know that the powder-soft snow makes for amazing skiing. What you might not know is the story about a dozen software rebels who met for three days of skiing nearly two decades ago.

Despite being competing developers, this small group of software developers agreed on one thing. If the software world was to keep up in the new digital age they would need to move far away from the archaic organizational business model.

What came from this meeting was more than a few days of fun skiing and warm dinners but also a proclamation that software development couldn’t, and shouldn’t, thrive in the old model any longer.

They wrote a short manifesto that still rings true today. It has led a movement for young entrepreneurs to follow. Now, industries across the globe have adopted this way of thinking that spans much further than software.

You too can bring your team into this lean movement through incorporating the values and principles that came from that ski lodge in Utah almost twenty years ago.

4 Agile Manifesto Values

Every individual and every organization makes decisions and choices every day. Some are good and others are questionable, but we all make choices.

In order for your team to make good, cohesive choices that move the project towards completion, everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to your company values.

The agile manifesto outlines these four values to ensure success and agility in delivering great software to the client.

1. Value the Individual

Whether your working with your team members, the customer, or another department within your organization, value each individual over the process or tools. Yes, efficient tools can make your work faster and more efficient. However, when you value each individual you will motivate everyone to buy-in on the project and work towards the end goal.

2. Value Customer Collaboration

Your customer isn’t a paycheck and they aren’t the enemy. Work with them, listen to them, figure out their pain points. These will allow you to create the best product for them and will ensure customer satisfaction with the final deliverable.

3. Value Change

Don’t let yourself get stuck in following the plan simply because it was what everyone agreed upon at the beginning. Sometimes your best plans are a guess as to what will happen in the future. Since we can’t predict the future, be open to valuing change when the plan doesn’t work out.

4. Value the Working Product

While creating documentation is valuable and beautiful mock-ups are great for presentation purposes, the main focus of everyone on your team needs to be the working product. Getting this working product into the hands of your customer is the main goal and must remain the focus of everyone on your team.

12 Principles of the Agile Manifesto

Working as part of a team can be the most rewarding, and yet most frustrating experience for many developers. To ensure maximum efficiency and productivity, teams must work from the same set of principles and have complete trust in their colleagues.

Here we outline the twelve core principles that make up the agile manifesto and allow teams to work efficiently and cohesively.

1. Be Customer-Focused

Your highest priority is a happy customer. And happy customers have the final product in their hands a quick as possible. Deliver working software on a regular basis and don’t keep the client waiting.

2. Accept Change

Change can be difficult, but in the agile framework, the change should be embraced and welcomed at any time. And this includes even at the end of your project. Many companies force a product to market simply because they have spent years working on it. If you reach the end of your product development and find the market has changed or the client isn’t happy, don’t be afraid of change.

3. Work in Short Time Frames and Deliver Frequently

Long delivery time frames are out-dated and won’t keep your customer happy. Work in short time frames and deliver your product at the end of each sprint. Get a working prototype into the hands of your client so they can see it and use it. Their feedback will be immeasurably better when they have a working deliverable to test out.

4. Break Down the Silos

Your R&D team should not be kept separate from your sales and marketing team or customer service. When all your departments work together, great software is developed and delivered to happy clients. Daily meetings are great to get everyone together and on the same page.

But you can also go a step further, have the sales team spend some time in the developing department. Send your top developer to spend a day with customer service listening to the questions and problems your customers are having. This will spark creativity and problem solving that can’t be done when everyone is kept in their separate silos.

5. Trust and Motivate Your Team

Hire the best, and then trust them to do their job and be the best. Motivated people will work hard and enjoy their work. Set goals and get your team on board with them, this will ensure great work done quickly.

6. Face to Face Is Best

Email communication has been a great addition to efficiency in the workplace. And yet at the same time, it has been a great hindrance to efficiency in the workplace. Many times that question you have for your co-worker is best when done face to face.

To avoid interruptions to workflow, save your questions for the predetermined, scheduled scrum meeting. When everyone knows that every day after lunch the whole team will meet for fifteen minutes, this enables them to have these important face to face conversations, saving wasted minutes checking email and avoiding interruptions by stopping by their office.

7. Focus on the Working Software

Progress reports and mock-ups have their place but not at the expense of getting the working software into the hands of the client. The only deliverable you need to focus on is that of the functioning software your client can use.

8. Work at a Sustainable and Repeatable Pace

While the agile framework focuses on getting your product and project done as quickly as possible, you still need to maintain a sustainable pace. It doesn’t do you or your team any good to work so hard you burn out and have to take a month off. Focus on agility while also being able to repeat this process again and again.

9. Pay Attention to Quality

Just because you’re focused on getting your product to the customer as fast as you can, doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice quality or technical excellence. A quality product is more efficient and easier to improve upon. Don’t sacrifice quality for speed of production.

10. Keep It Simple

You don’t need overly long and drawn-out processes. Do just what is necessary to get the job done. Long workflows and complicated delivery schedules are a thing of the past. Keep it simple and only do what is necessary to get the working product to your client as fast as you can while also delivering top quality.

11. Teams Can Organize and Regulate Themselves

Don’t fall into the trap of micro-managing your team. You’ve put together a talented and brilliant team, trust them to do their job. It doesn’t do you any good to hunt the best software developers only to then micro-manage or question their choices or decisions. Allow your team to self-regulate and watch them break records while doing it.

12. Reflect and Adjust

Schedule time into each project development process to reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Don’t just keep going to the next project, reflect how can we do this better? Continual change and progress will keep your team agile and successful.

A Simple Guide to a Complex Framework

Learning about the agile manifesto can be a life-changing process. But it doesn’t have to be difficult. To learn more about how to get your team on board with operating in the agile framework, consider investing in team development courses today.

You can learn more about our training here. This could be the best investment you make in your team this year, so don’t delay.

You’ve been there.  The VP announces a new initiative.  The organization is going to become “Agile.”  It’s going to revolutionize the way work is getting done.  It’s going to fix all the problems the organization currently have and any new ones that come up in the future.  You roll your eyes signifying “here we go again.” The first thought that pops in your head is “If I just hang on, I can wait this out.  Things will go back to normal.”

This is common in large change initiatives.  Some folks with passive-aggressive tendencies portray that they are in favor of the new vision, appearing to be helpful.  Yet it seems like every sentence starts with “That’s great in theory, but that won’t work here……”  Others are more direct and say “that’s not the way we do things here.”  Finally, there are the meek who don’t say anything.  They just go along waiting for the leaders to focus on something else so they can go back to the way it was before.

Resistance comes in many forms.  Why do people resist?  Some are just against change and will tell you such.  For the rest, the fear of change rules the day and has its roots in VUCA.  VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.  Throw in the differences each person has in cognitive ability, affecting how quickly people learn and how much they can retain.  Does anybody wonder why 70% of change initiatives ultimately fail?

There are only three constants in life:  Death, Taxes, and Change.  Leaders often believe they are unicorns.  They believe they are smarter than everyone else and can use their gut feelings to determine what is going on in the minds of those they are supposed to lead.  Using their gut feelings, they can guide the organization by focusing on the masses, rather than realizing the masses are really a collection of individuals.

The problem with leaders using their gut is that they are using 1/3 of the information available.  Leaders make a majority of their decisions based on the limited data that is available.  That limited data is mostly based on fictional generalizations of the collective experiences, education, and knowledge that is estimated across their team rather than considering what is going on inside of each individual.

To be successful, leaders need to consider the other 2/3 as well.  The life skills and cognitive capabilities of each individual either inhibit or supercharge the performance of each individual.

Rather than just addressing 1/3 of each individual, we prefer a holistic approach we refer to collectively the Head, Heart, and Briefcase (HHB) Approach.

The Head, Heart, and Briefcase approach has its origins in the core principles of Predictive Index’s concept of Talent Optimization.  Let’s talk about each component.

Head

The Head component of HHB consists of the drives and behaviors of the individual.  Using business assessments, such as Predictive Index, Pairin, or Kolbe, provides an objective view of the individual and if they have the soft skills and emotional intelligence to succeed as the change is adopted.

Heart

The Heart components of HHB consists of the values & culture inside the individual.  Core values, principles, morals, work ethic, and your “WHY” are part of your heart. To evaluate heart, assessment results can be used to identify areas to explore to determine if the individual’s values and culture align to what is required by their role.

Briefcase

The briefcase is what is most often looked at with respect to the individual.   Previous knowledge, skills, certifications, and experience are part of the briefcase.  Another way to think about the briefcase is to consider it as the resume or LinkedIn profile.  This is often the main criterion for recruiting and hiring yet is proven not to be a good indicator of success.

The Whole Person Shows up to Everyday

Every day, the person who shows up to work brings all three components with them.  Organizations should consider changing the way they hire, but also create a work environment where leaders can lead and manage easily knowing they have an understanding of the what the individual’s core values and skills so they can create an environment for great work.

At beLithe, we firmly believe in the concept of Head, Heart, and Briefcase.  Moving forward, we are going to start taking into account the HHB approach in everything we do.  We will indicate how our workshops, blogs, and social media posts support the HHB approach.

As you continue on your personal journey, don’t just consider your briefcase.  Consider the whole you:  Head, Heart, and Briefcase.

More to come!

Chris

Are you a leader looking to improve your team’s productivity? The agile framework for planning your product launches can take your productivity to the next level.

But for many teams, understanding the roles each team member must play can be confusing. Don’t worry, we’re going to break it down for you so that you can help your team to deliver top-notch products at break-neck speeds.

Keep reading to learn more about the agile framework, and the difference between agile product manager vs product owner. When everyone knows the role they must play your team can use these principles to hit your company KPIs every time.

Agile Roles and Responsibilities

Within the agile process, there are several key roles within the team. Unfortunately, these can become confusing, especially when job roles and descriptions become are not clear.

These roles include:

• Scrum master
• Product owner
• Development team

The most important thing to remember with agile roles is that they are not indicative of any particular team member’s job description. Within each sprint, anyone can play any of the agile roles.

Agile teams are self-organizing allowing them to adapt to the ever-changing needs of delivering products.  Agile managers see their role shift from taskmaster to coach.  A good agile manager will provide opportunities suitable for the different team members with different projects based on their skills, strengths, and personal job goals.  As a coach and servant leader, the manager will empower team members by supporting and teaching team members as they grow.

Meeting with your team members on a regular basis, a trusting environment forms where both agile managers and team members can share and receive feedback towards their personal goals.  In addition, agile managers help team members achieve their goals by aligning them with projects and roles that constantly provide opportunities for growth.  Companies who embrace the entire agile process and mindset see their employee morale boost significantly.

The scrum master is the protector of the team and an evangelist of the Agile mindset. The product owner is responsible for the product backlog, ensuring the highest priority items are broken down into chunks of functionality that are small enough to be completed in a two week period.  Both the PO and Scrum master roles often are confused with the traditional project manager role and can be tempting for leaders to assign them to themselves.

With a self-organizing team, team members must be allowed to organize themselves to get the work complete. This gives employees a sense of belonging and control, it also increases their job satisfaction and overall morale.

Each agile sprint needs a development team to develop the product to completion. The team should be cross-functional and include all the skills required to complete the job.  The team may include members from a variety of departments and job descriptions. Being a member of a cross-functional team, it is important for an individual to contribute their skills and strengths in the effort for the team to evolve into a high performance team while delivering a valuable working product.

Agile Product Manager vs Product Owner

As mentioned earlier, the product owner is responsible for the product backlog.  Based on feedback from a variety of stakeholders, they determine the priority of the items for the team to work on.  The team defines the steps required, when each step will happen, and who will do it. The self-organizing team keeps itself focused and on track to complete the work by the end of the iteration.

The product owner should be available to the scrum team on a frequent basis throughout the iteration.  The product owner clarifies confusion, answers questions, solves problems and collaborates on the scope as required.

In contrast, the product manager is the liaison between the internal development team (including the product owner) and the external world. They meet with the sales team, the product users, and other stakeholders who might be affected by the new product being developed. They are optional at many of the events or stand-ups but are not required at all of them.  In their role of supporting the team, the product owner’s presence should be apparent at all the events.

The product owner is focused on the product backlog, the team, and achieving the sprint goal. The product manager is focused on the customer and the overall market for the product being developed.

Together they form a synergistic relationship that relies on each other to stay focused in their own lane. In doing this they keep the product moving forward towards completion and launch.

To liberally use the quote popularized by Stephen Covey, the product owner ensures that the team reaches the top of the ladder and completes the project. While the product manager is responsible for ensuring that the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

How To Use These to Hit Your Goals

When these two roles work together your agile teams will see exponential growth and productivity. You will see many successful product launches and your company will reach your overall goals and objectives.

Within the agile framework, it can be difficult to know who is in charge. But, in true agile ideology, every individual handles defining their own functions and executions.

Looking at the big picture, each of the roles has its own domain over which they are in charge. Specifically, the product manager is the large strategist ensuring that there is a market for the product being developed. They work with the consumers to ensure that the product fills a need and will do well when launched to market.

Within each individual agile team, the product owner is responsible for ensuring that the backlog is prioritized and clearly defined. Once the product owner determines the priorities within the backlog, the developers choose which items they can work on and how they will complete the activities for the work to be completed.  They determine this based on their own schedule, skills, and personal development goals.  By the team engaging in the process to select what and how the work is to be completed, the team is accountable for the completion of the work.

By giving each person autonomy to determine their contribution the team sees greater accountability. Product ownership improves both morale and productivity.

Finally, the scrum master is responsible for the agile process itself. Their focus is on the scrum process and to limit distractions within the sprint itself. They also make sure the definition of done is upheld and new responsibilities are not added. Finally, they coach the team members in their day to day activities to ensure progress towards completion.

While the scrum master is a true expert on the agile and scrum process, the entire team is encouraged to complete agile training. This ensures everyone knows their roles and how they can best complete their goals.

Know Your Roles to Achieve Your Goals

Additionally, when you encourage those on your team from a variety of job descriptions across your company you will see an increase in job satisfaction and company morale. You will allow your team to lean into their strengths and use their unique skills to move products forward from idea to creation to production.

Stop wondering who is supposed to complete what parts of the agile process. When it comes to comparing the agile product manager vs product owner, you now know who is responsible for what components.

To better educate your entire team, contact us today. We will work with you to ensure everyone knows the various roles on a scrum team. And, they will know how to ensure responsibility and accountability across the entire team.

When you ask the typical person about a personal transformation in their life, the overwhelming sense you get is positive.  However, if you ask that same person about a transformation in their job, the underlying emotion is fear or negativity. Why is that?

How can people feel invigorated by their personal goals, yet fail to see the positivity in organizational change?

Maybe it’s about empowerment on one end of the spectrum and loss of control on the other. Here are five ways that change management leadership teams can invigorate organizations to feel empowered.

What Is Change Management Leadership

The idea of change management leadership comes from John P. Kotter. A Professor of Leadership from Harvard Business School, he invented an eight-step process that businesses use to lead change in their organizations effectively.

These eight steps form the three phases of the change management process.

Phase 1: Creating a Climate of Change

In the first phase, organizations work to build urgency for change based around a compelling goal or initiative. The point of this phase is to create an organization-held shared vision.

Phase 2: Engaging and Enabling the Organization

In phase two, organizations communicate the vision and design organizational goals that can produce early wins. The point of this phase is to increase organizational buy-in.

Phase 3: Implementing and Sustaining for Change 

In the final phase, organizations build onto the change to create organizational processes that make the change stick. By establishing processes and procedures around new organizational goals, it now becomes an institutional habit.

5 Ways Organizational Changes Can Empower Everyone

Great organizations tend to have a few things in common. When you look at the leading organizations in our global economy, you tend to notice a few things.

To start, they value their employees from top to bottom. Next, they foster creativity and change. Last, they have a cohesive vision centered around their brand.

Great organizations grow and change often, yet their shared vision and goal as a company remains the same. One example is Apple’s “Think different.”

Great organizations tend to have five strategic imperatives that boil down to one common idea: putting people first.

1. Inspire Through Purpose

Most changes in an organization are the result of operational or financial goals. It can be empowering and energizing for leaders of an organization, but not for average workers.

Great organizations empower and energize their employees by connecting goals to a powerful sense of purpose. Take Lego, for instance, a company that has grown way passed their generic blocks that we all played with as children.

Now, there are sets for everything you can think of from Star Wars to Harry Potter. The choices are endless. Today, we have Legoland. A popular tourist attraction designated to the brand.

They have undoubtedly gone through a series of transformations as an organization and a global brand. Yet through it all, one powerful purpose has remained constant.

“Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.” 

Such a simple concept, yet so powerful, it is similar to Apple’s motto. Great organizations empower their employees by first inspiring them through purpose.

2. Go All In

Great organizations, inspired by their larger vision, attack their organizational transformations like runners attack their goal of finishing a marathon. They go all in.

Excellent change management starts with the purpose of going all in. To make changes, we may have to work harder, longer, and for a far off reward for our efforts.

Organizations may have to become leaner to remain competitive, similar to a runner shedding weight. Nonetheless, to win, you have to be willing to go all in.

To win, you must think about initiatives that drive growth, changes that streamline operational systems, and investments in both leadership and talent to push transformation further.

It is a deeper purpose, a shared vision that will make employees go all in.

3.  Enable People to Succeed

To energize employees, organizations must empower workers with the tools, skills, and strategies they need to succeed during the transformation and beyond.

Like working on personal goals, there are moments of becoming along the journey. It is analogous to companies looking to grow and change in our global economy.

To fundamentally grow, we need to change. Change takes becoming in the form of learning new tools and acquiring new skills. It takes recruitment, development, and investment in all employees to find the success that’s waiting on the other side.

4. Instilling a Culture of Continous Learning

When organizations create a culture of continuous learning, they also foster a culture of growth. It makes the process of change more empowering.

To learn requires people to buy-in. To really learn, you must be all in. To be all in, you must have some greater purpose that drives you. One is a domino that affects another and creates a culture of continuous growth.

When someone learns, they form new neuropathways in their brain. In some ways, you can say, they are forever changed. They look and understand the world in a different way than they did the day before.

Companies that empower their employees also empower their whole organization.

5. Inclusive Leadership

For organizations to empower their employees from bottom to top, leaders must embrace cooperation to put people first.

In order to transform an organization, there needs to be a clear vision from leadership, a roadmap to get there, and an engagement to start working and building as a team.

When leadership puts people first, employees feel valued enough to share their ideas to add to the vision, creating lasting change and transformation in the process.

Change Starts From Within

Organizations that put people first inspire change and transformation. This is the power of change management leadership.

If you think your company could use assistance in adopting a change management leadership approach that puts people first, contact us for more details.

For more information on how you can transform your organization, check our blog for more insight into leadership, management, and organizational transformation.

Are you interested in producing more results quicker and with better results? Are you searching for a way to manage your team and encourage them to take on more responsibility towards launching new products?

If so, then you need to check out the agile framework for product development. Don’t worry if you’ve tried it before without success or it all seems confusing. We’re going to break it down and show you two unique ways to implement it. Keep reading to learn optimized ways for agile and scrum training to help develop your team for optimum performance.

What is Agile?

Traditional product development methods take months to plan out and years to fully develop before they ever hit the market. In the 1980s, the software development industry formulated a new kind of product development methodology.

This new format allowed technological firms to develop new software programs much quicker than traditional methods. This new idea of producing products as fast as possible and then adjusting the features as requested by the users allows software companies to keep up with the ever-changing technological landscape.
Technology changes and improves faster than the speed of light. Software companies can’t afford to develop at former speeds of production. Therefore they created a new method for getting their ideas from creation to launch much sooner.

And that new method is embodied in the ideology known as the agile approach to product development. Industries around the globe are now adopting the agile philosophy and adapting it to fit their industry and product development styles.

Within the agile format, companies work in short sprints, anywhere from one to four weeks of intense work on the development of a singular product. Everyone on the team is working towards the launch of one product or a bite-sized piece of a product.

There are several methods for implementing the scrum method, namely Scrum and Kanban. Both work equally well and depend on the type of project or product you’re developing to market.

Scrum

Scrum can be a simple process, but it is also difficult to master. It will take time and training for you and your team to fully understand and implement all that scrum has to offer. Your project management team will appreciate the set roles each person plays on the scrum team as well as the ability to lean into their strengths through their contributions to the team.

The scrum method is a continual cycle of creation, product development, launch, and the adaptation of changes from customer feedback. Scrum relies on rapid development, fast feedback, and quick adaptation of changes.

Some benefits fo utilizing scrum include fast innovation, quicker delivery of the product, and increased customer satisfaction along with employee satisfaction and morale. Customers enjoy faster innovation and new technologies. While employees find higher satisfaction from finding roles they were meant to play and fully utilize their strengths.

These roles include scrum master, product owner, and the development team. The scrum roles are not dependant on any individual’s job description. In fact, employee morale has been seen to increase when everyone is encouraged to take on different roles in different scrum cycles.

Leaders within your company will see increased production and employee satisfaction when they listen to their employees. Listen to what each individual wants to learn in their career and skill development.

Just as agile works in sprints, the sprints in scrum are called events. These events are called sprint planning, daily scrums, sprint review, and the sprint retrospective which is the final meeting in the sprint cycle.

Scrum is better if your production cycle is repetitive and calculated. Kanban is another form of agile development and is better if your production cycle is operational such as a help desk.

Kanban

The Kanban methodology predates agile however it incorporates nicely within the agile ideology. Kanban was developed by the Japanese automotive company, Toyota. They needed a simple way to manage and control both the work process and their inventory.

Kanban was the perfect method for both. In 2004 the Kanban method was first adapted to fit the software development agile product development methodology. Most people know the Kanban planning process as notecards on a corkboard. The cards are separated into different categories within the development process, usually “to do,” “doing,” and “done.”

Cards are moved from left to right across the spectrum as the product is developed. New ideas are kept in a backlog section and delayed projects are kept in a waiting section. This kanban method is great for tracking productivity across teams and projects.

What Are the Benefits of Agile and Scrum Training?

These methods having many benefits, mostly centered around fast development and sales of products. All of these frameworks seem simple on their surface, however, implementation can be more in-depth and difficult to effectively implement.

This is why we suggest training your entire team and not just key players. Everyone on your team has many strengths and skills. You can highlight these skills by allowing team members to determine their roles within each team. Only with training everyone can you fully develop your entire team to their fullest potential.

We also suggest you start with agile training before scrum or another methodology. There are many reasons why agile training comes before scrum training. Namely, your agile training will give your entire team the basic concepts for implementation.

Keep Your Business Flexible

As you can see there are many benefits to incorporating the agile methodology into your product development. Because of these benefits many companies are offering agile and scrum training to their employees.

Employees are experiencing higher morale when they can be more engaged in the sprint cycle and take on their key roles. Customers are also happier with the continual cycle of new technology being launched regularly.

If you have any more questions on agile training, contact us today, we would love to talk with you and see how we can help your company today.