Shows
No Nonsense Leadership#0113 - Donna replaces Shane as co-host
In this episode, we announce Shane Gibson's departure and introduce Donna Spencer as our new co-host. Donna describes her experience as a product designer and user experience researcher. Shane reflects on what he's learned about agile, product development, and leadership from over a hundred interviews with international experts. Murray discusses the podcast's commitment to delivering deep, pragmatic, and valuable insights on agile product development and leadership while avoiding shallow, rambling, and self-promotional content.
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2024-11-2911 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0103 - Product Management with John Cutler.
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss product management with John Cutler, famous for his newsletter The Beautiful Mess.
We dive into the purpose of product management as a driver of profitable growth. And we discuss how to use the north star framework to align your organisation around common goals. We examine how to use product roadmaps to communicate and prioritize plans and discuss how critical it is to be an open, honest, and effective leader. And finally we look at whether agile is critical or useless in product management. Join us as we uncover...
2024-05-301h 06No Nonsense Leadership#0102 - UX Research with Nick Fine
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss UX research with Dr. Nick Fine. Nick explains what to expect from a UX researcher, how to do user research well, and the challenges that researchers have to overcome to obtain valid results. Whether you're a product manager, designer, or developer this episode is packed with actionable insights, real world examples and expert tips to enhance your understanding of UX research and its role in creating high value, digital products and services.
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2024-05-1750 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0101 - The Vanguard Method with Ibrar Hussain
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss the Vanguard method with Ibbi Hussain, one of the founding architects of this revolutionary approach to organisation change. Ibi describes how the Vanguard method uses systems thinking, service design, and occupational psychology to make profound improvements to call center performance. Join us as we navigate through the philosophy of change, the importance of leadership. And practical insights into implementing sustainable improvement within organisations.
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2024-05-021h 01No Nonsense Leadership#0099 - Business Agility with Evan Leybourn
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Evan Leybourn from the Business Agility Institute about business agility. We discuss how to define and measure business agility, examples of agile organisations, and the struggle with traditional bureaucratic models. We delve into the different types of leadership, the nature of internal cultural and political changes, and the challenges faced by organisations in adopting and implementing agility.
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2024-04-0430 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0098 - Innovation and disaster with Ron Westrum
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Ron Westrum about how organisational culture drives innovation and disaster. We discuss generative, bureaucratic and pathological cultures, using real-world examples from NASA, Boeing and others. This episode highlights the importance of leadership integrity, openness, honesty, the free flow of information, and a mission-focused approach to achieving organisational goals. Listen for insights on identifying and promoting a generative culture, dealing with bad news, the role of technical maestros, and much more.
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2024-03-2156 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0097 - Unmanaged with Jack Skeels
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jack Skeels about agile for digital and marketing agencies.
Jack advocates for reducing the managerial overhead in organisations to promote productivity and improve communication. We discuss common hurdles in agile implementations. The value of a manager as a sports coach. The importance of scoping the work. Over managing and how real change must start from the top. This episode is full of practical advice and critical insights into organisation dynamics. This conversation is especially useful for those seeking to implement agile in a more holistic, efficient, and...
2024-03-0754 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0096 - OKR's with Adrian HowardJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss objectives and key results with Adrian Howard.
Adrian explains how OKR's can be used as a strategic instrument for aligning goals within your organisation. We walk through common pitfalls and misconceptions emphasizing the importance of using OKR's focused on outcomes rather than outputs. We discuss the potential for using OKR's with vendors. The idea of paired metrics. And how OKR's can serve as indicators of underlying problems within your organisations culture and structure.
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2024-02-2345 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0095 - The Heart of Agile - Mike LeberJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as discuss business agility and the heart of agile with Mike Leber.
We talk about how the heart of agile liberates you from rigid process frameworks by focusing on collaboration, delivery reflection and improvement. We talk about how the agile industrial complex has turned agile into a heavyweight waterfall process. And how innovation is happening outside the traditional agile bubble. And lastly, we talk about agile leadership. If you're interested in getting to the heart of agile and exploring business agility. This is a conversation you don't want to miss.
2024-02-0840 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0094 - The state of product management - Jason KnightJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jason Knight on the state of product management.
Jason shares his insights and experiences on the responsibilities of a product manager, the evolving nature of the role. Differentiating buyer and user features the importance of testing and validating ideas. Supporting cross-functional teams and fostering a mindset of continuous improvement. Jason shares insights from his experiences and discussions with thought leaders and provides advice for those navigating the product management field.
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2024-01-2548 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0093 - Dysfunction Mapping - Michael LloydJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Michael Lloyd about dysfunction mapping.
Whether you are new to the agile world or a seasoned professional, you'll find valuable insights as we delve into understanding team dynamics, honing the coaching process. And the essential principle of iterative hypothesis testing. Join us as we learned the power of mapping dysfunctions to unveil powerful solutions in agile environments.
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2024-01-1850 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0092 - Developing digital products in China - Bianca GrizharJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they as they chat with Bianca Grizhar about developing digital products in China. We discuss the cultural differences between Germany and China, and how Scrum improved team collaboration. We talk about the benefits of working directly with people offshore in cross functional, cross organisational teams. Whether you're a product manager or a developer, this episode is packed with practical advice that will help you work more successfully with your offshore teams.
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2023-12-2331 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0091 - Mobius Loop - Gabrielle BenefieldJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they as they chat with Gabrielle Benefield, the inventor of the Mobius loop, an outcome focused delivery framework. Gabrielle shares her journey in agile product development from Silicon valley to Yahoo. And the importance of focusing on outcomes of outputs and improving decision speed. We discuss why organisations don't focus on outcomes, the problem with contracts and scaling an outcome based approach. And finally, we talk about how you can use an experimental approach to bring an outcome driven, focus to your organisation.
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2023-12-0757 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0089 - Joe Justice - Tesla and SpaceXJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Joe Justice about how Tesla and Space X have developed a new operating model based on self-organising teams that continuously discover, deliver, and improve to achieve a thousand year goal. It's like the most radical combination of open space agility, OKR's, Continuous Discovery, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Improvement, you can think of. Whatever you think of Elon Musk, these companies are way ahead of most other companies and accelerating further. Tune in for a fascinating discussion about how Tesla and SpaceX work.
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2023-09-221h 03No Nonsense Leadership#0088 - Ivar Jacobson - EssenceJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Ivar Jacobson about Essence; a standard to develop patterns and pattern libraries that is being used by Scrum, SAFE, Lean and Kanban organisations. We discuss object oriented software engineering, use cases, UML, RUP, Essence and AI assisted method coaching. Join us to hear from one of the founders of the software engineering industry.
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2023-09-1419 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0087 - Stephen Bungay - The Art of ActionJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Stephen Bungay about the art of action. What can managers learn about leading in uncertain conditions from military history and modern NATO tactics? Military history shows that predictive plans and standard operating procedures work well when we are doing the same thing a thousand times, but fail badly when there's uncertainty, friction or competition, as there always is in software product development. Stephen explains how the military uses mission command to empower teams to achieve the leader's intent in an uncertain world. He explains the mission briefing process, the...
2023-09-021h 06No Nonsense Leadership#0086 - Jose Corella - Empowering teams to take initiativeJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jose Corella about how leadership principles from the US air force can be applied in civilian organizations. Discover how effective leaders empower teams to think critically and take initiative to achieve the goal. Learn about mission command red team thinking, servant leadership and the power of leadership training. Tune in for practical insights to enhance your leadership skills.
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2023-08-1846 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0085 - Jen Pahlka - Recoding AmericaJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jennifer Pahlka about her new book, Recoding America. Why government is failing in the digital age and how we can do better. In this episode, we discuss why governments at all levels produce poor quality online services, like healthcare.gov in the US, that cost of fortune and a very difficult to use. Jennifer explains that government is hamstrung by a rigid, hierarchical, risk avoidant waterfall culture, where everyone involved adds rules and requirements to protect themselves from blame. But there is an agile product development approach taking hold i...
2023-07-2159 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0084 - Jeff Patton - Product thinking and user story mappingJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jeff Patton about product thinking and user story mapping. Jeff emphasises that product thinking focuses on outcomes, not output. He explains that product market fit requires a deep understanding of customers and users problems and a balance of customer desirability, business value and technical feasibility. We discuss how to build a user story map and develop a release plan that reduces your risk and delivers as much value as possible within the time and budget available. Jeff discusses the limitations of requirements and the value of prototyping. He suggests...
2023-07-0945 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0083 - Ryan Lysne - Amazons product development processJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Ryan Lysne a product director at Amazon in charge of the Amazon app, the content creator economy and worldwide events. We ask whether Amazon is agile and discuss the structure of Amazon product teams. Then we talk about the 10 step product management cycle that Amazon product teams use. We talk about how they discover what customers want. How they pitch for funding, the technical development process and their focus on experimentation and analyzing customer behavior. We talk about data as a product, what it takes to make this process...
2023-06-2343 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0082 - Peter Lam - Fixing agile transformationsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Peter Lam, a management consultant specialising in fixing agile transformations. We delve into the value of consulting playbooks. The debate around centralised agile approaches and the disconnect between executives and workers. We examine why organisations often revert to bureaucracy after substantial change and the barriers functional silos post to agility. We discuss the Victorian government's flawed COVID response and how executives can foster agile change by removing organisational blockers to team progress. Finally we explore why those rising within a functional hierarchy often resist agility and how executives emphasis...
2023-06-1247 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0081 - Jem ’Jelly’ D’jalel - Can you be an agile project managerJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss agile project management with certified scrum trainer, Jem Jelly (Jem D'jalel). We ask whether agile project management is possible or if it contradicts the principles of agile. We debate whether projects are inherently predictive, siloed, and staged or whether they can be adaptive fluid and cross-functional. And we discuss whether project managers are inevitably authoritarian assholes or if they can be adaptive servant leaders. Murrays explains how he uses agile practices and principles in project management. While Shane argues they cant co-exist. Join us for this insightful discussion on agile...
2023-05-2657 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0080 - Jim Highsmith - From the Wild West to Agile and BeyondJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jim Highsmith, one of the authors of the agile manifesto. We discuss the history of software development from the wild west to structured methods. The agile movement and the courageous leaders who implemented it . We talk about what agile is. The agile mindset. The problems agile solves and why it took off. We talk about what's missing from the agile manifesto and what was harder for the industry to understand than people thought. We discuss the problems with the agile industrial complex. The problem with safe. And the life...
2023-05-1352 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0079 - Pawel Huryn - Modern Product ManagementJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Pawel Huryn about product management. What it is, and isn't? How to motivate teams and what makes a product succeed. We discuss the difference between product management, which focuses on discovery and project management, which focuses on delivery. And how to do both at the same time in one empowered product team. We talk about how you can become a product manager and the best product management tools to use. Join us as we uncover valuable insights to help you succeed in this critical role.
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2023-04-2837 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0078 - Stefan Wolpers - Scrum Anti PatternsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Stefan Wolpers about scrum anti-patterns. We discussed common Anti-patterns such as a scrum master assigning tasks to a disempowered team and the solution for them. And we discuss why these anti-patterns keep occurring. The problems with scrum master education and training and the big consulting companies who sell scrum as a project management process. Finally we delve into the core differences between scrum and the assumptions that bureaucratic organisations have about the nature of work.
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2023-04-1347 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0077 - Brendan Marsh - What really happened at SpotifyJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Brendan Marsh about what it was like to work at Spotify. How Spotify's agile ways of working are just a way to achieve the speed to market and speed to learning that their leaders feel are its key competitive advantage against bigger and better funded companies . How the Spotify model really works and how it's changed over time. And how the model is all about empowered teams, constantly trying new ways of working and organizing themselves to find the best way to move faster.
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2023-03-301h 00No Nonsense Leadership#0076 - Roman Pichler - fundamentals of product managementJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss the fundamentals of product management with Roman Pichler, author of agile product management with scrum. What is a product manager? What is a product? What's the difference between a product and a project? What's the difference between a product owner and a product manager? How do you know what to build? How do you develop a product strategy? How do you develop a product roadmap and define sprint goals? Focusing on objectives, not lists of features. Focus on one goal at a time. Time box product goals to maximize value...
2023-03-161h 00No Nonsense Leadership#0074 - Howard Podeswa - bring back business analysisJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they talk with Howard Podeswa about agile business analysis. What do business analysts do? What's its value? Why are big requirements up front, a bad idea? And how do we do business analysis in an agile way? How do we do use cases and user story maps and how do we break them down into user stories? What's the relationship with the product owner? Business analysis is a critical skill that every development team needs to understand and prioritize their work. It's time to bring back business analysis.
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2023-03-031h 02No Nonsense Leadership#0073 - Jonathan Crossland - How to make better decisions with AmmerseJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they talk with veteran developer, Jonathan Crossland about Ammerse, a value based decision making guide for products and teams. Ammerse is a mnemonic for agile, minimal, maintainable, environmental, reachable and solvable. Jonathan walks us through how to use these ideas to understand what we value now and what we should place more value on based on our context. It will be easier to understand this podcast if you look at the diagrams on the ammerse.org website, while we're talking
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2023-02-2335 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0072 - Rich Mironov – the problem with sales led developmentJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they talk with Rich Mironov about the problem with sales led development. It’s easy for B2B enterprise companies to fall into a sales lead development model where the majority of development work is customisation starving the core product of resources for innovation, new features, quality improvements and technical resilience. The end result is frustrated product development and engineering teams, uninspiring products, low profitability, slow growth and difficulty getting investment. Fixing it requires product leaders to help executives understand that the economics of a product and service business are very different an...
2023-02-161h 03No Nonsense Leadership#0071 - Donna Spencer - UX Design in empowered product teamsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they talk with Donna Spencer from Maker X about user experience design in empowered product teams. We discuss user research, information architecture, and visual design. And the problem with the way UX is often done in traditional teams and agile teams. We discuss the value of having a UX person embedded in a product team and the responsibility UX designers have to educate other members of the team in UX. And finally, we talk about UX design models. The problem with design sprints and the value of evolving your design over time...
2023-02-0955 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0070 - Al Shalloway - Pattern Libraries for knowledge workJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they talk with Al Shalloway about Amplio and the movement back to pattern libraries to improve knowledge work. As lean and agile have become commercialised they've become rigid, bureaucratic frameworks that disempower teams and prevent us from improving. Pattern libraries set us free. When we learn patterns like the concept of bottlenecks we are able to see things in our world that we couldn't see before
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2023-02-0242 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0069 - Jim Benson - Kanban and the Collaboration EquationJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they talk with Jim Benson, author of personal Kanban, about his new book, the collaboration equation. Jim describes how Kanban allows teams to focus and see bottlenecks so they can resolve them. He explains how organizations starve people of information, safety and purpose and describes how to build collaborative systems that give people the information they need to make better decisions which will in turn, make their companies much more effective, innovative, and resilient.
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2023-01-2341 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0068 - agile innovationJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat about their experience with start ups and scale-ups venture capitalists and corporate innovation. We talk about manager's fear of innovation, innovation theatre, and some models that organisations could use to be far more innovative than they are now.
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Contact Murray via email or Shane on LinkedIn shagility.
The No Nonsense Agile Podcast is sponsored by:
2023-01-1343 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0067 - Eric Lopez - mission commandJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss mission command with Eric Lopez, a management consultant, CEO and retired US Army Colonel who commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eric explains how mission command allows leaders to decentralize tactical decisions so that people on the ground can take initiative to achieve the mission in a volatile and uncertain environment. Mission command helps leaders become much more agile in a rapidly changing world.
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2023-01-0857 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0066 - Teresa Torres - continuous discovery.Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Teresa Torres, a product coach, speaker, and author of continuous discovery habits. She explains how product managers, designers, and software engineers can use continuous discovery to ensure that they're building the right product and continuously improving it over time. In this interview, you'll learn to balance action with research so that you can get started without being blindsided by what you don't get right. If you want to discover products that customers love that deliver valuable business results. Then this interview is for you.
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2022-12-3159 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0065 - Dan Olsen - the lean product development playbookJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Dan Olson, author of the lean product development playbook. A practical guide to building products that customers love. Most new products fail on most new features are rarely used. Dan describes a practical six step process to improve your chances of building successful products.
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Connect with Dan on LinkedIn or at https://dan-olsen.com/
Contact Mur...
2022-12-171h 11No Nonsense Leadership#0064 - Anabela Cesario - ProductOpsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Anabela Cesário VP of product ops at OutSystems, a low code development platform. Anabela describes what product ops is and how her team mentors, coaches, supports and trains 25 product managers. From setting up the product board tool to training people in continuous discovery, providing standard data for product reporting and managing the company's strategic product planning and reporting process.
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2022-12-0944 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0063 - Jonathan Hall - implementing continuous deliveryJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Jonathan Hall about implementing Continuous Delivery. CI/CD requires a level of test automation that seems impossible for most organisations. Jonathan describes a practical implementation path to CI/CD that everyone can do. Start by changing the role of QA to focus on pairing with developers to write good automated tests. Automate tests for all of your code changes, bug fixes and change regression testing. Automate your deployment and rollback tests. Test your changes one at a time against a fresh copy of production. Fix all defects and broken...
2022-12-0250 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0062 - Jeff Gothelf - lean ux and sense and respondJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Jeff Gothelf about Lean UX and Sense and Respond. Lean UX explains how to do UX design and product development in a highly agile way. The core of Lean UX is the canvas, a facilitation tool for collaboratively collecting and testing product hypotheses. The key output is a prioritised backlog of discovery experiments. Sense and respond is a management book that explains how to organise and support agile product teams and encourage agile product and UX design thinking. It explains how to continuously research, design and development to maximise...
2022-11-2457 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0061 - Adam Thomas - product survival metricsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Adam Thomas about Product Survival Metrics. Empower the product team to make decisions quickly in uncertain situations by negotiating clear boundaries for the product team. Negotiate boundaries with stakeholders early. Use data to track your progress. When your heading towards a boundary make decisions to stop, pivot or invest. Product development is not a linear path. Agile product development is not a methodology that you buy it's a way of working that you find. Use decision journals to document and review decisions.
Listen to the p...
2022-11-1724 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0060 - Christian Crumlish - the intersection between UX design and product managementJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Christian Crumlish about the intersection between UX Design and Product Management. The risk of designing the wrong product is high. Customer research reduces that risk and uncertainty early. Product Development is a process of continuously learning, building and adapting. You can start anywhere in the cycle if you keep looping through it. Good products come from cross-functional product teams that are focused on measurable outcomes. Be outcome-focused rather than output-focused. One team rather than silos. Empowered teams rather than bureaucracies. Tailor your design process for your situation rather than...
2022-11-1055 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0059 - Willem-Jan Ageling - agile project management and leadershipJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Willem-Jan Ageling about agile project management and leadership. A good leader focuses on the goal and the people and provides the support the team need to get there. Common anti-patterns are promising things the team can't deliver: disempowerment, micro-management, bureacratic processes, ignoring organisational blockers, watermelon reporting and pretending to be agile while reinforcing the bureaucracy. Agile is a big change. Leaders need agile training, mentoring and coaching; otherwise, they won't get it. And if they don't support agile, they will undermine it. Find the leaders who are frustrated with...
2022-10-2949 minNo Nonsense Leadership#058 - Bryan Finster - continuous deliveryJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Bryan Finster about Continuous Delivery and SAFe. Continuous delivery improves quality, productivity, value, and developers' lives. It reduces the cost of change so we can experiment and learn rapidly. Focus on improving your process so that you can deploy working solutions every day. Ship one very small feature and see if it has value. Start with the minimum viable Continuous Delivery activities. Solving these activities is the improvement journey. Never bypass the deployment pipeline. If the process doesn't work, fix the process. Organise your teams around domain boundaries. Run CD...
2022-10-2050 minNo Nonsense Leadership#057 - Scott Baldwin - product managementJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Scott Baldwin from Productboard. We need to shift our focus from features shipped to value created because most of the features we build arent used. We can harvest customer feedback from everybody that engages with customers to find the problems that need to be solved. Put those proposals into an ideas backlog and research them to determine value to the customer, value to the organisation, technical feasibility and cost before you build them. Develop high value features step by step, testing validity as we go. A product manager is...
2022-10-1430 minNo Nonsense Leadership#056 - Chris Butler - agile product managementJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Chris Butler about agile Product Management at Microsoft, Facebook and Google. Three core things, that product managers should do. Wrangle uncertainty, help stakeholders make good decisions and build alignment through communication with roadmaps, strategy documents, priorities and specifications. The difference between a Product Manager, Product Owner and Project Manager. Dealing with uncertainty. Map your assumptions and test them with qualitative research. Develop a strategy. Determine value. Decide what to do. Power dynamics. Hippos. Product Operations. Lean UX and Continuous Discovery. How to work with engineering teams. Product Management Patterns...
2022-10-0753 minNo Nonsense Leadership#055 - Matthew Skelton - team topologiesJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Matthew Skelton about Team topologies. Siloed bureaucracies are too slow and inefficient in a fast moving agile world built on software. Use the Team Topologies patterns to redesign your organization for focused fast flow. Understanding Value Stream Aligned teams, Enabling Teams, Core Subsystem Teams and Platform teams. And the Collaboration, facilitation and Service interaction models. Cognitive load. Iteratively design your organization with the people doing the work.
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2022-09-301h 01No Nonsense Leadership#0054 - Sandy Mamoli - building great teamsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Sandy Mamoli about building great teams. Why do some teams perform well and others perform poorly. The importance of skill, trust, respect, collaboration common purpose, constructive feedback and continuous improvement. How to deal with toxic experts and charming slackers in the team. The benefits of allowing people to choose their own teams. How to run a self selection event. Coaching managers to improve the system the team is working in. Allowing teams to select their own managers. The poor state of Agile and the problem with SAFE.
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2022-09-2453 minNo Nonsense Leadership#053 - Simon Wardley - Wardley MapsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Simon Wardley about Wardley maps. Wardely maps are a discussion tool that surfaces assumptions about competitive landscapes. Starting with the customer, we draw the value chain of components that we need to meet their goal and then identify what stage each component is in the evolutionary lifecycle. Is a component a custom build, a product or service or a commodity or utility. When there is a competitive market everything moves to become a high volume, low cost standardised commodity over time. Understanding this allows you to get ahead of...
2022-09-1757 minNo Nonsense Leadership#052 - assessing agile capabilityJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about assessing the agile capability of individuals, teams and partners. A lot of people and companies in the agile and software development space exaggerate their capability. Certifications and big brand names don't tell you much. What really matters is experience and a commitment to ongoing learning. Asking people to explain what they would do in real scenarios. You can tell whose an expert by asking them about the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches. Don't rely on big name professional services firms and consulting firms. Invest in improving your own...
2022-09-0942 minNo Nonsense Leadership#051 - Tony Ulwick - outcome-driven innovationJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about Outcome-Driven Innovation with Tony Ulwick. Most products fail in the market because they don't meet customers' needs better than the alternatives. To succeed, we need to study the problem that customers are trying to solve, the process they use to solve it and the metrics they use to measure success. When we understand the job to be done and the outcomes to achieve, we can design a product that meets those outcomes significantly better than our competitors and be sure to win in the marketplace. Product Design, Innovation, Jobs...
2022-08-2456 minNo Nonsense Leadership#050 - Debbie Levitt - ux designJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about UX design with Debbie Levitt. UX Design is research based information architecture and interaction design that requires deep expertise. Most agile teams are feature factories that build things that don't satisfy customers. Product Managers and Engineers don't have the skills and experience required to do good UX Design. The democratisation, decentralisation and prototype first approach advocated by Lean Startup, Lean UX and Marty Cagan is garbage. Design Thinking is light weight rubbish that doesn't work. Agile doesn't work for Design. UX Design should be done by UX experts in...
2022-08-111h 19No Nonsense Leadership#049 - Tom Gilb - software metricsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about Software Metrics with Tom Gilb. Tom Gilb inspired the authors of the Agile manifesto with his innovative incremental and scientific approach to Software Engineering. In this podcast we talk about Evo and Value Agile. Defining your scope with objectives and success metrics. How to measure anything. Why feature backlogs are a waste of time. Being laser focused on outcomes. How to deliver as much value as possible in the time and budget available.
Tom has kindly offered free access to podcast listeners to a raft o...
2022-07-2848 minNo Nonsense Leadership#048 - Todd Lankford - agile anti patternsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about agile anti patterns with Todd Lankford. Patterns are common solutions to common problems. They may be good, bad or neutral. Agile anti patterns are solutions that make it harder for agile teams to achieve the goal. The top anti patterns are: unrealistic arbitrary deadlines, functional silos and managers who dont listen to or support their teams. Other anti patterns. Pattern languages and pattern libraries.
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2022-07-2247 minNo Nonsense Leadership#047 - Erik de Bos - agile as a paradigm shiftJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about Agile as a paradigm shift with Erik de Bos. Most organisations are slow moving bureaucracies defined by authoritarian hierarchies, rules and contracts. Agile is a completely new way of thinking and a new vocabulary which makes new concepts and information available. Agile is part of a broader social movement that's about workplace democracy, experimentation, change, empowerment, decentralisation and local ownership that is changing how our society works for the better. Its an evolution that produces organisations that are fast, flexible and lean. And in an uncertain and rapidly changing...
2022-07-1550 minNo Nonsense Leadership#046 - Team skills vs rolesJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about effective agile product teams. Business people and technical people work together daily in one long-lasting customer-focused team. Roles vs Skills. The power of words. Do titles create hierarchy and functional silos within the team? T-shaped people. Should everyone be a developer? Are specialised rol
eavyweight waterfall process. And how innovation is happening outside the traditional agile bubble. And lastly, we talk about agile leadership. If you're interested in getting to the heart of agile and exploring business agility. This is a conversation you don't want to miss....
2022-07-0841 minNo Nonsense Leadership#045 - Staffan Noetberg - agile and flowJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Staffan Noteberg about Agile and Flow. Agile is about adapting to unexpected change. Coaches should be practitioners. Speed up your feedback loop. Set the goal and let the team get on with it. Monotasking. Set up the environment to reduce interruptions. Start small, get things working and scale out. The problem with SAFE. We need to focus more on the interactions between people. Informal networks resolve dependencies faster. Use tools to build your network while working remotely.
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2022-07-0133 minNo Nonsense Leadership#044 - Mary and Tom Poppendieck - lean software developmentJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Mary and Tom Poppendieck about Lean and Software Development. Organizations have queues because they don't care about the customer. The three rules of lean, customer focus, flow and highly efficient expert teams. Scale your organization like a micro services architecture. Its not about doing the work right its about doing the right work. Don't focus on utilization focus on the value we provide. Don't copy practices copy the principles behind the practices. Don't centralize processes. Set goals and let teams develop their own processes.
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2022-06-241h 08No Nonsense Leadership#043 - Bruce Taylor - working with offshore teamsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Bruce Taylor about working with offshore teams in developing countries. Why do people send their work offshore? Cost or talent? Is it cheaper to send work offshore or not? Outsourcing projects or augmenting the team. How to recruit the right people in a developing country. How does Agile work with people who have been brought up in a very hierarchical culture? Pairing and site visits are a powerful way to improve trust, knowledge and collaboration. Retaining team members. Scrum vs Flow for remote working. What do you do when y...
2022-06-1745 minNo Nonsense Leadership#042 - Kyle Griffin - uncertainty, complexity and changeJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Kyle Griffin about uncertainty, complexity and change. Our requirements are probably wrong. So show people and build small bets. Our plan is likely to be wrong. So let's do things to mitigate our plan, being wrong. Our estimates are going to be wrong. So don't rely heavily on the estimates being right. Our code's going to be wrong. So design your code to be easy to change. Agile is good because at its core Agile is a system for dealing with uncertainty effectively.
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2022-06-1036 minNo Nonsense Leadership#041 - Raj Nagappan - agile 2Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson for a conversation with Raj Nagappan on using Agile 2 to create awesome products. The early Agile movement was a rebellion against traditional command and control waterfall development that was failing everyone. Agile is a very important paradigm shift that has led to great improvements but it hasn't evolved as we have learnt more. Agile 2 is an evolution of Agile that brings it up to date with a focus on Thoughtfulness and prescription.; Outcomes and outputs.; Individuals and teams.; Business understanding and technical understanding.; Individual empowerment and good leadership; Adaptability and planning.
2022-06-0342 minNo Nonsense Leadership#040 - Scott Sievwright - becoming a better leaderJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson for a powerful conversation with Scott Seivwright on becoming a better leader. Leading the Agile 20 Reflect conference. Building community, co-creating a vision and principles, skeletons vs exoskeletons, dealing with conflict, angry fathers and controlling managers, letting go and sharing responsibility, the responsibility process, Johari window, Transactional analysis, five dysfunctions of a team, the courage to be open, non-violent communication, leaders vs managers, anthropology and alpha males, teams as systems, servant leadership, authoritarian psychopaths roll back agile, evolution favours agile organisations, soft systems analysis, imposter syndrome, humility, being a work in progress and open...
2022-05-2647 minNo Nonsense Leadership#039 - Michael Kusters - defending SAFeJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson for a debate with Michael Kusters about the pros and cons of SAFe. The Scaled “Agile” Framework for enterprises. SAFe is taking over because executives like its detailed 3-month program plans, detailed processes, hierarchical organization, and comprehensive rollout plans. SAFe has been great at sales and marketing, and it provides a great way for consultants to make money. But is it agile? If not, what are its benefits? Should we leave the field for unscrupulous consultants making money out of SAFe, or should we try and make it work? Should we use SAFe as t...
2022-05-1957 minNo Nonsense Leadership#038 - Dave Farley - continuous deliveryJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Dave Farley on Continuous Delivery. Working in a way so that our software is always in a releasable state. Establishing fast, high quality feedback so that we can make decisions based on the reality of our customers needs and our systems state, rather than on guesses. The difference between CD, DevOps, Agile and XP. The business case for CD. Test Driven Development makes developers better. Three ways to safely deploy your code to trunk. Design on the assumptions that your wrong. Implementing CD.
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2022-05-1344 minNo Nonsense Leadership#037 - Lisa Crispin - holistic testingJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Lisa Crispin on Holistic Testing. Build quality in. Continuous testing for continuous delivery. Building shared understanding of requirements. Shorten feedback loops. Moving from traditional testing to agile testing. Test automation. The test pyramid and agile testing quadrants. Business-facing tests with behavior-driven and acceptance test-driven techniques. High performing teams.
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Connect with Lisa via Linkedin or https://lisacrispin.com/ and https://agiletestingfellow.com/ , Murray via...
2022-05-0638 minNo Nonsense Leadership#036 - Esther Derby - agile coachingJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Esther Derby on Agile Coaching, Agile Leadership, Culture and Continuous Improvement. Making work more humane. Successful coaches understand the context and the content. Taking responsibility for personal growth and business outcomes. Good leadership adds a lot of value. Influencing senior managers. Underlying extractive structural patterns reemerge. Agile Governance.
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Connect with Esther via Linkedin or www.estherderby.com , Murray via email or Shane in the Twi...
2022-04-2939 minNo Nonsense Leadership#035 - Bas Vodde - LeSSJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Bas Vodde on LeSS. LeSS is true Scrum at Scale not just at the team level. LeSS applies the principles, purpose and elements of Scrum in a large-scale context, as simply as possible. Many scrum teams with one product, one product owner, one product backlog, one sprint, one sprint planning meeting, one sprint review and one retrospective. Large-Scale Scrum is Scrum. Empirical process control. Transparency. More with less. Whole-product focus. Customer-centric. Continuous improvement towards perfection. Systems thinking.
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2022-04-2247 minNo Nonsense Leadership#034 - Jurgen Appelo - designing an agile organisationJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Jurgen Appelo on how to design an organisation to support self management, continuous innovation and human experience. Jurgens unFix model supports gradual change, dynamic teams, and recognises that managers play an important role. The model is inspired by innovative companies including Haier and Tesla, various agile scaling frameworks, and books such as Team Topologies, Dynamic Reteaming, and Organization Design
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2022-04-161h 02No Nonsense Leadership#033 - Marty Cagan - empowered product teamsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Marty Cagan on Empowered Product Teams. Do discovery and delivery in one team. Discover problems worth solving, rapidly test prototypes and develop the best ideas using an agile approach. Low and high fidelity user experience prototypes, feasibility prototypes and data prototypes. Good leaders build highly aligned loosely coupled team, coach them and give them strategic problems to solve not requirements to build. Agile is great for delivery but the agile process police are killing product development.
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2022-04-0849 minNo Nonsense Leadership#032 - Jason Yip - Agile @ SpotifyJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Jason Yip about Spotify. The Spotify approach works for Spotify, but it might not work for you. Develop your product strategy first, and then design your organisation to support it using team topologies. To succeed, you need unity of purpose, trust in people and playful growth. When you have alignment, you can give people autonomy and trust them to do the right thing. Design your architecture to enable autonomous teams. Define golden paths for teams and encourage them to experiment. Play drives innovation and growth. Don't outsource your strategic c...
2022-03-3144 minNo Nonsense Leadership#031 - David Pereira - product leadersJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with David Pereira about Product Leaders. Successful Product Leaders don't write requirements; they define the problem, set a goal and empower the team to get the job done. Be curious about customers' problems but don't take their word on the solution. Constantly test your assumptions with prototypes. Get your ideas in front of a customer early. Start with low fidelity and only enhance it when it shows value. Focus on outcomes, not deliverables. Measure value with leading indicators not lagging ones. Empower your team to solve your customers problems better th...
2022-03-2543 minNo Nonsense Leadership#030 - Alidad Hamidi - systems thinkingJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Alidad Hamidi about Systems Thinking. Systems Thinking is about understanding that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It is the interactions between things that drive the outcome. For example, cutting costs locally often increases costs globally. One person's solution is often another person's problem. To solve the real problem, we need to bring people together to agree on the issue, the goal and the scope of the system. Then we need to keep asking why until we can create a model of how everything interacts...
2022-03-1748 minNo Nonsense Leadership#029 - Steve Tendon - Tameflow and the theory of constraintsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Steve Tendon about Tameflow and the theory of constraints. If you can find the constraint preventing the organisation from achieving its goal and address it, you can make extraordinary improvements in performance. But sadly most improvement efforts fail because they don't address the constraint in the system. We talk about how to understand and address the constraint using the story of Herbie and the scout troop going for a hike. And what happens when you drive a group of jeeps through the jungle. We discuss the importance of unity...
2022-03-1047 minNo Nonsense Leadership#028 - Daniel Mezick - open leadershipJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Daniel Mezick about open leadership. What motivates people and how to get great results in a group. Organizations are social games with goals, rules and players with different resources and decision rights. Most organizations are totalitarian dictatorships with a heavy management tax. Open organizations are much more effective at harnessing the talents of their people and resources. Harness peoples talents by giving them an attractive goal, clear boundaries, leadership support and the right to make decisions about their own work. Be generous, calm and support your people.
L...
2022-03-0358 minNo Nonsense Leadership#027 - Scott Middleton - agile is dead McKinsey killed itJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Scott Middleton about his article Agile is dead. McKinsey killed it. The Agile PMO. Agile as a cost out tool. Slathering the Agile word onto everything to sell services. Do big consulting companies really understand Agile? What about people and interactions over processes and tools. What about delivering value to customers early and often? Real agile still has a lot of value. Tailoring your agile approach and getting close to customers.
Read Scott's article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/agile-dead-mckinsey-just-killed-scott-middleton/
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2022-02-2441 minNo Nonsense Leadership#026 - Tobias-Mayer - self organisation and servant leadershipJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Tobias Mayer about self organization and servant leadership. Everyone can be a leader. Take responsibility. Be generous and humble. Stop demotivating people. Create an environment for people to be brilliant. Create a vision, define boundaries and get out of the way. Be a servant leader. Empowerment and anarchism. Servant leadership and Christianity. There's nothing better than having a good relationship with another human being. Help people step into their brilliance.
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2022-02-1846 minNo Nonsense Leadership#025 - Maarten Dalmijn - product owner vs product managerJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Maarten Dalmjin on Product Owners vs Product Managers. What are they, what's the difference between them and why does it matter? Why do we need a product manager if we have a product owner? Overwhelmed vs Absentee product owner. Supporting the Product Owner. Product discovery. The sprint bubble. The rift between product management and scrum. Rapid feedback loops. Getting close to the customer. Building the right thing. Dual track vs integrated design. Scaling product development. Anti patterns. Product Management is more than Scrum.
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2022-02-1050 minNo Nonsense Leadership#024 - Alex Stokes - Organisation transformationJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Alex Stokes on Agile Transformation. Why do organisations do agile transformations? If agile transformations are working why is the state of agile so poor in large organisations? Is a waterfall transformation process incompatible with agile? Measuring the benefits of a transformation. Transformations are a way to get leadership support for major change. Imposing vs empowering. Coaching vs telling. Patterns vs frameworks. Continuous change vs transformational change. Using agile to become agile.
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2022-02-0433 minNo Nonsense Leadership#023 - SAFe and Scaling with Al Shalloway
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Al Shalloway about the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and scaling.
We explore the benefits and shortcomings of SAFE, focusing on value streams, batch and flow systems, lean principles, and the importance of short feedback cycles. We critique the traditional command-and-control approach and emphasize customer value, lean methodologies, adaptive implementations, and system thinking.
Al Shalloway shares his experiences and insights, advocating for a more holistic approach to scaling agile practices. Tune in for valuable perspectives on implementing agile frameworks effectively.
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2022-01-2838 minNo Nonsense Leadership#022 - Fredrik Carleson - SAFe from the Business Owners point of view
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Fredrick Carleson, who has successfully managed a 1500 person SAFe program in a Swedish government department. We explore the challenges of Safe and it's alignment with Agile values so you can decide if SAFe is right for you. In this discussion, Frederick emphasises the importance of agile leadership, autonomous customer focused teams and the need to address root cause problems within your system asas you scale. Join us for a fascinating and critical discussion of SAFe.
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2022-01-2138 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0021- 3 amigosJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a discussion of the Three Amigos pattern, where a product person, a developer, and a tester work ahead of the team to define features before estimation. We explore the benefits, challenges, and anti-patterns of the three Amigos approach, emphasising the importance of early preparation, collaboration and testable requirements.
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Contact Murray via email or Shane on LinkedIn shagility.
Yo...
2022-01-1323 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0020 - Scott Ambler - disciplined agile toolkit
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Scott Ambler about the Disciplined Agile Toolkit. In this episode we discuss toolkits vs frameworks. Tailoring your ways of working for your situation vs prescriptive methods. Method prisons and framework jails. The problem with two day mastery certifications and the over commercialisation of Scrum and SAFe. The PMI and Agile and Products vs Projects.
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2022-01-0627 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0019 - agile ux design with Jared Spool
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Jared Spool about user experience design. We discuss the importance of research in understanding users' problems so that you can develop solutions that provide a great user experience. We talk about the need to do some lightweight research and planning upfront to build a shared vision and the value of doing most of your research and design continuously with the whole team so that you can learn what users really need. This conversation highlights the importance of building your team's UX capabilities and blending UX into everything you do.
Li...
2021-12-2228 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0018 - The joy of agility with Joshua Kerievsky
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Joshua Kerievsky about his new book “Joy of Agility”. In this podcast we talk about the poor state of agile today. Commodification, fake agile, dark scrum and water-scrum-fall. Real agility should be a joy to work in. Agility doesn't mean process frameworks, it means moving with quick, easy grace and being quick, resourceful, and adaptable. Use mantras and stories to get the message across. Be quick but don't hurry. Be poised to adapt. Be balanced and graceful.
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2021-12-0825 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0017 - DevOps with Mirco Hering
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Mirco Hering where we dive into the world of DevOps.
Join us as Mirco shares his insights on the essence of DevOps and its implementation challenges, from redefining DevOps beyond tools to the importance of feedback loops. Mirko sheds light on the goals and misconceptions surrounding DevOps. Discover how DevOps aligns with agile principles and explore the role of professional services firms in driving agile and DevOps transformations. Join us as we share practical advice for adopting DevOps practices effectively.
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2021-12-0330 minNo Nonsense Leadership#016 - Sam McAfee - digital product development
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Sam McAfee about leading digital product development. Building a great product team. Working remotely. Real agile vs fake agile. Factory model vs product model. Empowering teams. Building influence and trust. Bringing marketing, design and engineering into one cross functional product team. From functional silos to capability building. Product managers vs Product owners. What a great product manager does. Holistic product leaders. Lean startup and fast feedback. Long term vs short term thinking. The Product canvas and hypothesis testing. Scaling product teams. Change requires leadership.
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2021-11-2335 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0015 - Agile Military ideas with Ben Ford
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with former Royal Marine Commando Ben Ford about how agile practices mirror modern military practices in the field. We discuss John Boyd's OODA loop and the value of an accurate model of one's environment for good decision making. And we discuss mission command and the value of leadership training to develop an effective approach for orders, planning, delegation, and review. We hope this episode provides food for thought on how you can utilise some of these military leadership principles to enhance your agile practices in the software product development world.
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2021-11-1637 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0014 - Agile Product Development
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about Agile product development. discuss what a product is and what a product manager does. We talk about the value of customer feedback and the need to test your hypotheses. We define minimum viable products and discuss technical debt, scaling and co-designing products with customers. And we talk about how you can move from a project to a product mentality and the value of applying an iterative approach to your marketing and sales. All this and more, stay tuned.
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2021-11-1135 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0013 - Visualizing your workflow with Mark Jørgensen Chaudhry
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Mark Jørgensen Chaudhry about visualising your work so you can identify bottlenecks and remove them. We emphasize the need to work together to map out your process and identify delays and waste. We discuss work in progress, touch time, wait time and process efficiency. And we identify the root cause of waste and inefficiency in large organisations. Join us for lots of examples, challenges and recommended resources for improving your workflow.
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2021-11-0224 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0012 - Matrix team models aka the "spotify model"
Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation on the "Spotify Model" for scaling agile teams. We cover the role of leadership team structures. Tribe dynamics and the importance of coaching and support during organisational change. We share our experience with implementing this model in organisations and some of the anti-patterns. Join us to learn how to use the Spotify model to scale your agile organisation successfully.
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2021-10-2622 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0011 - Lean agile transformations with Matt TurnerJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation about the psychology of change in lean agile transformation with Matt Turner. We discuss how to implement agile and Kanban practices in IT operations, the challenges faced by managers, and the importance of visualising work and understanding flow. We also touch upon the misconceptions and misapplications of agile in the industry. Join us to learn how to be a much more effective change agent.
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2021-10-1927 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0010 - Quality skills vs rolesJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss why quality as a whole team's responsibility. We discuss why it's critical to integrate QA processes from the beginning, the importance of clear acceptance criteria, how to handle technical debt and the continuous improvement process. Tune in for an engaging and informative discussion on quality in your agile projects.
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2021-10-1237 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0009 - invitational agile with Michael DelamazaJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a conversation with Michael Delemaza about agile coaching. We discuss invitational coaching, the differences between coaching and mentoring and the challenges faced in transforming traditional organizations into agile ones. We also talk about the importance of clear communication and alignment at the executive level, as well as dealing with politics and resistance within organizations.
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Connect with Michael via LinkedIn, M...
2021-10-0547 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0008 - Leadership support for becoming an agile organisationJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a no-nonsense Agile discussion. In this episode, we talk about leadership support for agile ways of working. Why leadership support is critical for change. Why some leaders support agility and others secretly undermine it. How agile is being sold as a miracle cure by big consulting companies. And why agile is rolled back by authoritarian leaders with a factory mindset. How executives can learn what agile really means by working with agile coaches. Why servant leadership is the key to agility. And how you can change your culture rapidly by changing who...
2021-09-2930 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0007 - fixed price agile contractsJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a no-nonsense Agile discussion. In this podcast, Murray and Shane talk about why projects with fixed price, fixed scope contracts often go way over time and budget. We talk about uncertainty, sales incentives and underestimating. How fixed scope contracts lead to big design up front, siloed delivery, authoritarian management and conflict with suppliers. We discuss how to use an agile approach to solve these problems. We talk about testing suppliers by starting small and scaling up. And we talk about agile contracts where you engage a supplier to provide a fixed team...
2021-09-2140 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0006 - agile scalingJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a no-nonsense agile discussion. In this podcast, Murray and Shane discuss how to scale agile. We discuss the problems with a big bang top-down agile transformation and the benefits of starting small and experimenting to find a scaling approach that works for you. We talk about the factory model of organisation vs autonomous product teams. And we contrast agile change management with waterfall change management.
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2021-09-0740 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0005 - Agile project managementJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a no-nonsense agile discussion. In this episode Murray and Shane have a robust discussion about about projects and project managers. Are agile and project management fundamentally incompatible. Are projects waterfall and hierarchical by definition or can they be done in an Agile way. Are project managers unhelpful authoritarians controllers by definition or can project managers be agile servant leaders. If a project is Agile is it a project anymore? Tune in for this controversial discussion.
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2021-08-2533 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0004 - Evolutionary design & architectureJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a no-nonsense agile discussion. In this podcast, we talk about evolutionary design and the problem with a narrow focus, planning at different time horizons, big blocks and small blocks and the importance of having flexible roadmaps that change as we learn. We also talk about centralised teams vs experts in teams, how the role of the coach is to build the team’s capability and how a coach should be a sports coach, not a therapist.
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2021-08-1833 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0003 - is scrum brokenJoin Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson in a no-nonsense agile discussion. In this podcast, we discuss Ron Jeffries' recent article “Can scrum be fixed?” We talk about Ron’s concerns with the Scrum Industrial complex and Developers issues with Scrum. We talk about what we like and don't like about Scrum and how the gaps we've experienced can be overcome.
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2021-08-1029 minNo Nonsense Leadership#0001 - What is this podcast about?Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as we introduce ourselves and discuss our backgrounds in leading the development of valuable software products and services. We emphasize the podcast's focus on leadership, product and service development and modern ways of working. We discuss the value of continuous discovery, delivery and improvement to develop products and services that are viable, desirable, and feasible. We critique traditional authoritarian, bureaucratic management and highlight the need for empowerment, adaptability, and learning to improve revenue, profit, and customer experience. Listen now to learn what this podcast is all about.
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2021-07-1522 min