Scrum Day London is our second conference of the year, and we’re thrilled to bring you more exciting episodes from this renowned event!
As we continue our TalkInTen series, we have a special episode featuring Colleen Johnson, CEO of ProKanban.org, who discusses the future of Agile and the critical importance of flow in project management.
In the fast-moving world of digital transformation, agility has never been more critical. However, getting there is often slow, costly, and takes too long to provide value. Join Colleen as she shares how organizations can leverage the power of simple, yet effective practices to optimize the flow of value to customers. Learn why ‘Flow’ – a state where work progresses smoothly and efficiently through all business processes, without bottlenecks or delays – is the critical element missing from most organizations. Explore how to shift from traditional Agile frameworks to a Flow-centric approach through core practices like continuous delivery, work-in-progress limits, and fast feedback loops. Attendees will learn about simplifying Agile practices for efficiency, leveraging real-world examples to showcase how flow enhances project success rates. Colleen will provide actionable insights for implementing Flow in organizations, addressing the challenges of adoption and measuring success, and ultimately envisioning a future where agility equates to a predictable, efficient, and value-driven workflow.
Episode Highlights:
- The Future of Agile: Discover why ‘Flow’ is essential for optimising value delivery in Agile environments.
- Practical Applications: Learn how to implement flow-centric practices like continuous delivery, work-in-progress limits, and fast feedback loops.
- Enhancing Efficiency: See real-world examples of how flow can transform project success rates and organisational agility.
- Actionable Insights: Gain actionable tips for adopting and measuring the success of flow in your organisation.
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!
Use code PRODUCTAGILITY24 for 15% off training courses at Sheev.
Sheev -
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
Scrum Day London is our second conference of the year, and we’re thrilled to bring you more exciting episodes from this renowned event!
As we continue our TalkInTen series, we have a special episode featuring Colleen Johnson, CEO of ProKanban.org, who discusses the future of Agile and the critical importance of flow in project management.
In the fast-moving world of digital transformation, agility has never been more critical. However, getting there is often slow, costly, and takes too long to provide value. Join Colleen as she shares how organizations can leverage the power of simple, yet effective practices to optimize the flow of value to customers. Learn why ‘Flow’ – a state where work progresses smoothly and efficiently through all business processes, without bottlenecks or delays – is the critical element missing from most organizations. Explore how to shift from traditional Agile frameworks to a Flow-centric approach through core practices like continuous delivery, work-in-progress limits, and fast feedback loops. Attendees will learn about simplifying Agile practices for efficiency, leveraging real-world examples to showcase how flow enhances project success rates. Colleen will provide actionable insights for implementing Flow in organizations, addressing the challenges of adoption and measuring success, and ultimately envisioning a future where agility equates to a predictable, efficient, and value-driven workflow.
Episode Highlights:
- The Future of Agile: Discover why ‘Flow’ is essential for optimising value delivery in Agile environments.
- Practical Applications: Learn how to implement flow-centric practices like continuous delivery, work-in-progress limits, and fast feedback loops.
- Enhancing Efficiency: See real-world examples of how flow can transform project success rates and organisational agility.
- Actionable Insights: Gain actionable tips for adopting and measuring the success of flow in your organisation.
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!
Use code PRODUCTAGILITY24 for 15% off training courses at Sheev.
Sheev -
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
Hello and welcome to the Product Agility Podcast. I'm your host Ben Maynard and for the next few days we have extra special episodes coming to you from Scrum Day London 2024. This event is a beacon for agile enthusiasts and professionals and I'm thrilled to bring you insights and new ideas from some of the brightest minds in the agile and product community. For those of you who are new to the podcast, the Product Agility Podcast is your go -to resource for practical tips, strategies, and stories from world -class product and agile thought leaders. Our goal is to increase your knowledge and motivation to experiment, so together we can create ever more successful products. Before we dive in, I'd like to thank our sponsor for this episode, Sheave. Sheave is my company, and we specialize in helping organizations simplify, focus, and align through embracing a product mindset. and using Agile as a means to drive success. Whatever your product or Agile challenge, learn about how Sheave can help your organisation thrive or extend out your own Agile journey at www .sheave .co .uk. That's S -H -E -E -V. And to get a whopping 15 % off of all of our courses, use the code PRODUCTAGILITY24 at the checkout. Now we have an exciting line of speakers from Scrum Day London 2024 who will be sharing valuable insights and practical tips for you to experiment with. So grab a pen and paper, perhaps a hot drink, and let's dive into a talking tent. Ooh, it always surprises me when I put my computer on mute, because it plays the end of the intro, and every time I'm like, bugger. OK, we're here with Colleen Johnson, someone who I didn't think I was going to get the opportunity to speak to, but I'm extraordinarily pleased that I get to meet you. Often when I start podcast episodes, I say the stuff that actually I haven't planned to say. And it's normally stuff about actually like I've been really looking forward to meeting you. I mean, unfortunately didn't get to see your talk, but I had a spy there watching it for me. So I'm really intrigued to know about your talk. And it's lovely to get to meet you because I think the things that you are doing, and I won't kind of spoil the surprise that you would do yourself at the moment, but the things you're doing, the thing your organization is doing, I think it's really awesome. I think the way that you're kind of bringing, being inclusive and bringing voices, elevating voices of some really awesome people. So yeah. It is so fantastic to have you here, Colleen. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and a little bit of an overview as to your talk, that'd be wonderful. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat with you today, too. My name is Colleen Johnson. I'm the CEO of Proconbund .org. I'm here from the States, so a little jet lagged still, but nothing about coffee won't remedy. I spoke this morning on the future of Agile as flow. And so a lot of what we were talking about in the session was really about what is flow, what's required for work to flow effectively, and what does that mean for agile practices? I think I've heard in almost every session I've been to so far, somebody bring up, is agile dead? I'm sure it's been coming up in your conversations as well. So it was an, I guess my take was really where are we headed next and how do we continue to keep working on all of the objectives we had when we started? trying to be agile, I'll give that some air quotes, and what was the goal in the first place. And so I think when we look at what businesses hoped to get from employing agile practices and agile coaches and transformation efforts in a lot of ways hasn't come to fruition for many places. And we're starting to see, I think, the backlash against that. And so thinking about how we can apply flow is really saying, If we want to be able to get feedback quickly, deliver value quickly, innovate quickly, all of those things, how do we do that in a way that's lightweight, simple practices, more cost effective, more humane, right? Not burning our people out to do it and ultimately giving customers what they want. I mean, it sounds wonderful. And I know where you're coming from, but I don't know how many of the listeners know where you're coming from. Because a lot of that sounds like the same rhetoric that was used to sell Agile for so long. And as you said, it didn't really work. And for multiple reasons. And yeah, I think we'll never, maybe we'll never know exactly because every context is a little bit different. But if there was some necessity that sounds like great rhetoric, but really what makes, what you're talking about, anything different to what people have been selling. in regards to Agile for the last 10, 15 years. What would your answer be? I think probably one of the biggest things and what we talked about this morning, although I demoed it with water and made an epic mess in the room, was we talked about this concept of capacity. And I think for flow, whether we're talking about traffic, whether we're talking about water, whether we're talking about flow state for focus, or if we're talking about products, moving product value out the door, you have to have capacity. And And I think for a lot of organizations, the hardest first step to take is limiting how much work we have in progress. So really when we start thinking about what is flow, you can be doing any process and start to think about how much capacity do we have and do we have an amount of work in flight that is appropriate for the capacity that we have as an organization. I think most organizations are probably operating with far too much in their systems, whether that's team level. you know, portfolio level. And then everything comes to a screeching halt, right? And then when something happens, when the market changes, when the customers, when we get feedback from customers, or something happens in the world like COVID, right? We're unable to respond to it because there's so much other stuff that we're working on. And so a lot of it really is about trying to bring that focus in so that we can get one thing done quickly, get that thing done before we pick what the next most important item is to work on. And so you see organizations now, I think, applying flow practices and compound practices to Scrum. We see organizations that are doing it from the ground up, but you can really apply that thinking to any of the processes that you already have in place. So it's not really that it's a new process or a new thing to roll out. It's really just shifting how we think about the amount of work that we're working on at any given time. Sounds lovely and simple. It is. Surprisingly simple, I think. And I think that maybe is what's so refreshing about it. I think for a lot of businesses, like we're, there may be, agile is now a bad word for them. They're burned out, right? They spent a lot of money, they changed meetings, they changed roles, they put in all their structure, maybe aren't seeing that return and the cost of getting to this point is very high. And so I think when you kind of strip all that back and say, what are the simple things we could do right now that will give us an immediate return? It is, it's very simple. It's hard to do, but it's very simple. So a lot of the challenges which senior leaders were facing in organizations, they haven't changed significantly over time and Agile hasn't helped many of those leaders actually deliver what they want to deliver or meet the targets they set. So part of that was maybe because I know the senior leaders didn't want to learn about Agile, thought they already knew it, thought it was quite simple and it's fine. that will be saying, it's just common sense. How have you found it at that kind of C level? CEO is leadership in organizations, their willingness, desire, and ability to learn about flow and what it means for their organizations. Yeah. I don't think you're going to get a CEO to come sit in a flow class. And that's totally fair. But I think we have to shift how we're talking about things to be less about the practices and more about the benefits. And in in the terms that they're using. And so this came up this morning as well. If I'm talking with senior leaders or folks in the C -suite, I want to think about everything that we're working on right now is an investment that hasn't yielded any return. And there's risk associated with that, right? If I'm increasing the amount of things that I'm working on, I'm increasing the investments in things that I'm not getting any return on. And that return can be two different things. It can be value, and the customers are psyched, and they're going to pay us for it. Or it can be feedback. that they're not psyched and they're not gonna pay us for it. And in that case, that gives us something to respond to, right? Both of those things have a return for the organization and provide value back to the organization. But when I'm talking to a senior leader, I wanna speak in the terms that are important to them and that is money. What is this costing us and what are we getting out of it? And so if we can think about all of the work that we've got in flight as investments without a return, you're gonna get their attention. And if we think about the work that we've got in flight as a sunk cost, right, all this work that's sitting around, the longer it's sitting, the more we're accruing a cost without a return. And so pivoting the language, I think the principles are the same, but pivoting the language to be really about dollars and investment in return, I think is what is critical for that audience. Excellent advice. Now, you asked the audience during your talk, What is required for flow? What did they say? We talked, well this is when I dumped water everywhere. So what we were talking about during this question, what's required for flow, we were really talking about capacity and having the space in your system to respond to things and we used water as that example. Right, if there's no capacity in the cup and I keep pouring it in, it's gonna spill out. We... modeled that with water, but then how did you feel when the water went all over the table and all over the floor? Well, it feels wasteful, right? I feel like I just wasted water. Well, it was somebody's water bottle. But then we asked the question, well, what if it was a $100 bottle of whiskey that now is spilling all over the floor? How would you feel about the wasted product coming out of that? And think about what that translates to at work, right? So if we have all this wasted effort where we're working on things that we can't move through a system, It's the same type of waste. It's wasted human capital basically. And so when we talked about what was true for, what has to be true for flow, we looked at traffic, we looked at focus state, like flow state, we talked about writing, and we talked about in all of these different scenarios, capacity is required to make things move. Brilliant. I feel like I could listen to you for a lot longer. Unfortunately, we're running out of time. I wish I called it Talks in 20. Maybe it would have given us a bit more time. Sorry, someone just tried to deliver some cups. I've told them to... They seem to go... I didn't tell them to go away. They just gone away. They'll be back. Colleen, thank you so much for taking this time out of your day. I know we didn't have it scheduled in, but I really, really appreciate you taking this time. I know you're extraordinarily busy and jet lagged, so it means a lot to me and our listeners to have you here. If people want to find out more information about you, I'm going to put your LinkedIn profile link into the show notes. And obviously I can go to... Is it procamband .org? Yep. for more information. Anything you'd like to wrap up with any closing thoughts? Yeah, we just launched a new course at Procombon called Accelerating Product Value. I'm super excited about the content we're bringing out with that class. It's very different, right? It's not about product backlog management or product discovery or a lot of the things that we tend to think of when we think about the upfront part of. bringing products to market. It's really about how do you manage those investments so that you can get the return as quickly as possible. So we've kind of shifted a lot of the practices to managing the work that's in flight instead of planning and defining and discovering what to work on next. And I think it's a really unique stance. So if you're interested in learning more about the course, you can find that on proconvend .org too. Fantastic. I'm sure some people will be heading there. Thank you so much again for your time. Thank you for listening. We'll be back again at some point in the very soon foreseeable future. Thank you for listening.
