Easy Agile Podcast Ep.17 Defining a product manager: The idea of a shared brain

On this episode of The Easy Agile Podcast, join Nick Muldoon and Dave Elkan, Co-CEO's and Co Founders of Easy Agile. As they look forward to the next phase of growth for the company, they wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on their journey so far.

Nick and Dave talk growing a start-up in regional Australia, finding the right people, sustaining a positive team culture and the importance of having values driven teams.

"Our purpose is to help teams be agile and in doing that, we're doing that for ourselves, we're constantly trying to learn and adapt and experiment with new things. I hope that was a useful little tidbit and journey from Dave and I on how we got Easy Agile to this point."

- Nick Muldoon, Co-CEO, Easy Agile

"There's these funny little hacks and analogies and I think that's a longterm vision thing. If you are running a business which doesn't have that longterm vision and purpose, then you can go actually in multiple directions at once, and you're not going to make any progress."

- Dave Elkan, Co-CEO, Easy Agile

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Transcript

Nick Muldoon:

Good day, folks. Nick Muldoon with co-founder, co-CEO of Easy Agile, Dave Elkan. Before we kick off, we'd just like to do an acknowledgement to the traditional custodians of the land on which we broadcast and record today, the Wodiwodi people of the Dharawal Nation. We pay our respects to elders, past and present, and extend that same respect to any of our aboriginal folks that are listening today.

Nick Muldoon:

Dave, just a bit of a reflection on five and a half years of business?

Dave Elkan:

Business? Yeah, a rollercoaster. It's been great fun.

Nick Muldoon:

It is a rollercoaster, isn't it? I guess, where's the best place to start? The best place to start is at the start.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, I mean we can go before the start. There's always a good prequel. We can do a prequel episode later, I guess. But I guess the earliest I remember working with you, Nick, was at Level 15 at Kent Street, at Atlassian. There was this redheaded guy down the one end of the building, working on Atlassian GreenHopper and I was busy working on the Kick-Ass team at the time, building the new issue navigator, which is now the old issue navigator, back in 2011. And then you screwed off to San Francisco and I followed eventually, and then we hung out there for a while, didn't we?

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, I remember that because we sat down, I was back to get married, and we sat down and had a coffee and a yarn about you and Rin relocating to San Francisco and how it had been for Liz and I, and what the process was like and all that sort of stuff.

Dave Elkan:

That's a great opportunity to acknowledge our lives in this amazing journey as well and if it wasn't for those, we probably wouldn't have gone to San Francisco in the first place, because a large part of the promotion of going overseas and doing that for me anyway, and for yourself, I'm pretty sure.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah. Well, Liz was this big conversation of go overseas and experience something new and I was quite comfortable in Sydney and enjoying my role with product management at Atlassian, but it was really a push to try and experience and do something a bit different.

Dave Elkan:

Absolutely, same here. And you were there for over four years, in San Francisco, and I was there for three. But you came home, you got married, and I just grabbed you for a coffee and we sat there in Martin Place and had a chat, and you said, "Yeah, it's great. Come over, you can stay with me for two weeks." And I'm like, "Oh, I barely know you."

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, but it was so much. I mean, even not knowing Liz or I, it was way better than the alternative. So for folks listening in, the Atlassian apartment, at the time, was in a fairly rough part of The Tenderloin in San Francisco, and it probably wasn't the greatest introduction if someone was relocating to San Francisco.

Dave Elkan:

No. But to cut a long story, there's a lot of good stories here I'm sure we can tell one day, but eventually, we both had daughters in San Francisco and we wanted to be home and closer to family. Then we came home to Sydney and found that the traffic is 20% worse or 50% worse than when we left and we were uprooted. So once you've been uprooted, you've got to plant yourself back somewhere and it's quite easy to change at that point, and you've chosen to go outside of Sydney.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, this Wollongong regional lifestyle.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, where you can have a full block of land to yourself without breaking the bank and you can, relatively speaking, like times have changed a bit in that space, but since then, that's what we were chasing, wasn't it? And we looked at Newcastle, and-

Nick Muldoon:

Looked at Newcastle, looked at Brisbane, Adelaide, we even went through Wagga Wagga. We had the most amazing Indian meal in Wagga Wagga, we were almost like, "This is the place. If we can get food like this in Wagga, we're sweet." Bit too cold, but we ended up settling on Wollongong, in large part because of the proximity to the beach and the Early Start Discovery Space for the kids and just a pretty cool, chill place to raise a family. There are aspects of it as well, I think, that really reminded Liz and I of San Francisco. We used to go to the farmers market down at the Ferry Building a lot on a Saturday morning, and we found the farmers market on a Friday in Wollongong on Crown Street North, so there were these similarities to kind of enable us to transfer from one city to the other fairly easily.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. It's a pretty easy place to live and to be. The way I like turn it, is it's just far enough away from Sydney.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, a nice little national park in between.

Dave Elkan:

That's right, it can't really encroach on us, it's not allowed. You can't build there so you're always going to have that buffer. But I do remember going back to Sydney for a niece's birthday and having been charged $9 an hour for parking at the beach, considering you don't even have a parking sticker anymore because I wasn't a resident, and I was like, "Wow, it's really expensive." But for anyone coming to Wollongong or the other way, you can park for free at the beach. That's just kind of like a good litmus test of the difference that we're talking about here.

Nick Muldoon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I guess this regional life, like we didn't really have a tech industry here. We come from Sydney where, 10 years ago, there was this emerging tech scene and SydJS, SydCSS, other meetups up there, and in San Francisco we were thrust right in the middle of it. I remember, we were chatting the other week about a meetup where we met, the Ruby Creator at a Heroku meetup, I think it was, and a session on [detrace 00:06:17] at that company that's gone bust now, whose name I can't even remember, but we were in the heart of all the meetups in San Francisco. Then in Wollongong, there was none of it, and so it was like a question of what could we do to build a community here as well, try and meet other like minded folks?

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, it was definitely that desire, wasn't there? And we set out to do that, and I think it was Rin who termed it Siligong. I remember we were actually talking about Siligong Valley before we actually left, and we just decided to make that the name of the community. I was actually looking back on my old emails the other day and I was like, "Oh, we actually talked about Siligong before being in Wollongong," so that's pretty cool.

Nick Muldoon:

I remember early days because I think you and Rin returned on flight with [Umi 00:07:08], and Umi was six or eight weeks old.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, October.

Nick Muldoon:

If I'm not mistaken, I dropped you at your mom's place so that you could catch up with your mom and Ken and that was kind of like home base. And it was a couple of months after that or something, where we finally had you down here. I think you stayed with Liz and I when you came down here-

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, again for two weeks.

Nick Muldoon:

... for another couple of weeks, and we were really talking about the genesis of what was, at the time, what was termed Arijea Products, and a brand that we never ended up sticking with. What do you remember about those early days and trying to get the business off the ground?

Dave Elkan:

Actually, come to think of it, you were staying in, not Coniston, [Carmila 00:07:59], it was actually less than two weeks because we all had little kids and it was just a bit crazy. So I think Rin and I organized... we came down and did inspections and we stayed with you whilst we're doing that, and then we were able to secure a place in Fairy Meadow and we moved down, so we were going back and forth a bit at that point. And then it was this six months of just literally... I didn't have a bike, I just walked to work, which is super new to me. I've always caught the bus or ridden my bike.

Dave Elkan:

Some of you may know I've never commuted to work and I hopefully will never have to do that, and we've engineered our lives around that kind of concept. But I think that it was really great, I was just living within two kilometers' walk of work, and that was for at least the first six months until I moved to Balgownie, but it was great time of my life and we had a brand new baby and just concentrating on the business, trying to [crosstalk 00:09:00]-

Nick Muldoon:

I remember, we really didn't have much of an idea of what we were doing in early days. We chased down one area and we said, "No, that's not appropriate," and then we kind of turned our attention to something else.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. We were chasing our tails a little bit. We, at one point, had five products with two people.

Nick Muldoon:

That's right.

Dave Elkan:

I think that, that's too much, but with good conversations with the fellows around us at IXI, that we were able to have... like they were asking good questions and I remember Rob and Nathan asking us, "What is it you're good at?" And I think it was Rin, was like, "Okay, you've got this app idea, who're you going to market it to? Look at your networks." And it was, all those arrows started pointing towards Agile.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, I think it was this idea that Rin had like, "You can build it and they will come, or you can figure out your go-to market and your distribution piece, and what's the audience that you've already got, and how do you leverage the audience that you've already got in Agile Software Development to kind of seed and build that audience, and get some momentum?" And that's what really kicked us along and got us going. If I'm not mistaken, I think we'd actually... not that we had a lot of outgoings, but I think we were actually break-even by June of 2016, and it was kind of like this, "Hurray," moment because we were not going to have to get on the train and commute to Sydney for working at Atlassian or something like that. We'd found product-market fit and we could kind of pursue and go to the next stage.

Dave Elkan:

That's right, yeah. There's a lot in that story as well, like how we found product-market fit and the steps towards that and lots of learnings from that time as well, which is great to share eventually, I guess, but we might go down a rabbit hole if we jump into that one. But I certainly do remember good considered conversations that were held by lamingtons and tea in the Mike Codd building at the Innovation Campus at University of Wollongong, where we started. And that was really just a time to... it felt different to my prior, at the time 15 years of experience, where you actually, it's okay to stop and talk and think about what you're doing, whereas in the past, it's just been, "Go, go, go, build this thing." And it's like, "Oh, okay," so that was really refreshing for me and I think that, that was a really good step in opening up what became the story map, which was our first really successful product.

Nick Muldoon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). You mentioned the lamingtons and tea, it was probably at least 50% of our time getting the business off the ground, was lamingtons and tea. It was chatting about stuff, it wasn't writing code, we didn't have customers to speak of. It was really trying to figure out what sort of market did we want to pursue, what solutions did we want to provide and what sort of business did we want to create? That was a large part of our time getting it off the ground.

Dave Elkan:

Absolutely. And for those listeners out there who don't know what a lamington is, it's actually a delicious piece of sponge cake dipped in chocolate sauce and then coconut, shredded coconut, so I know you can buy them in US, we actually did that at Atlassian and they were a huge success, especially because they had cream inside them as well, so real good for a cup of tea or coffee, whatever you take. But the thing is that it's a good idea to sit down with a co-founder and talk a lot more than you type, that's the kind of rule I took out of that.

Nick Muldoon:

It's interesting because it was kind of like that approach to talking instead of typing that was kind of like the genesis of one of our values, this engaged system, too. And I don't think you'd read Kahneman's book at that time, and that was something that came later, but even just this idea of, "Now, let's just take the time to think and process this sort of stuff," and the context [crosstalk 00:13:09]-

Dave Elkan:

No, I do remember. Sorry, yeah. I did a presentation at Lansing Summit in 2017 on Engaged System too.

Nick Muldoon:

16 or 17?

Dave Elkan:

16 or 17, I can't remember which one it is.

Nick Muldoon:

'16 because you went to Barcelona in '16.

Dave Elkan:

Barcelona, and that's what I did there, wasn't it? Yeah, so that was early on that I read Thinking, Fast and Slow, which I highly recommend.

Nick Muldoon:

And the context around this, for folks listening; in mid 2016, Dave had a nine month old daughter. My daughter was two years old and I had a newborn and you were to have... your number two was on the way, right? So we were building a business as we were starting and establishing our families as well, so it was, "Let's do it all," in a new city. Like, "Let's do it all at once."

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, you might as well, right? Just bite it all off and rip the Band-Aid off and get it done. I mean, my daughters were only 18 months apart, so that kind of... just get it over and done with. Get the hard part done and then you can go and enjoy yourself afterwards, just kidding. It's great to have lots of kids at a young age, like I really do miss that time. But yeah, we were pretty crazy, but we got through.

Nick Muldoon:

It gave us a constraint as well, didn't it? Because we couldn't burn the midnight oil, we couldn't flog ourselves from 05:00 AM to midnight because we simply did not have the energy and we had to get kids fed and bathed and off to bed and all that sort of stuff. So it brought a cadence and now that I reflect on that, there was another value that was kind of coming out of that, which was with respect to our balance and establishing balance in our lives.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah I do remember, sorry to interrupt, a tweet idea, I can probably dig it up, which was me hanging out cloth nappies or diapers on... it must've been, it was in Balgownie so that must've been after six months. But I was hanging out nappies and I must've been working from home that day or something like that, but that was just like me balancing life like that, with work. And I think it came back with like work, life, family balance or something like that. We would expand that to work life, family, community balance, is what we try and chase.

Nick Muldoon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). How did we get on this journey around the values and kind of establishing the values? When was that in the life of the business?

Dave Elkan:

I can remember the place we were in, we were actually in our Crown Street office when we really sat down and really hunkered down into that, so that would've been 2018.

Nick Muldoon:

I think in November 2018, we held our first advanced Easy Agile, and that's where you ran the session, "What got us here won't get us there." And so at that point in time, we had the two products, we had Easy Agile User Story Maps and Easy Agile Roadmaps, and we had changed our brand from Arijea Products to Easy Agile, to kind of focus our energy on the Agile space. We divested the other three products that weren't focused on Agile, so we'd sold those off to another Atlassian Solution marketplace partner. I think that's where we started having these conversations around the next evolution of the growth of the business. Then it was in 2019 where we were back in Crown Street, back in the office, where we were having that conversation about codifying, establishing, writing down our values.

Dave Elkan:

That's right, and it's a highly valuable process to go through and to really just pause on the day to day, and really focus on it. That's something I've always had trouble with, like I've always got things to do, but once you just extract yourself from that process and zoom out and look at the company and what you've come up and what you hold dear, that's when you can really start having those conversations, but making it an actual thing. I think that you can't just do it on the side, you can't just do it as well as other things, it's really got to be like the priority as I like to say. Priority is not a plural, it doesn't make any sense if it's pluralized, but that should be the one thing you do in an ideal circumstance, like you just do it and really focus on it, because it's really hard.

Dave Elkan:

And it shouldn't, I guess not in one sitting, but at least when you do it, make it a serious thing because if they're real values and you live them, like they just are pretty immutable, they just keep moving forward with you. If you found you're not living them, then you should absolutely revisit them, but we've been lucky enough in that the values we put forward have stayed true and I really feel like, of all the companies I've worked at, even Atlassian, like these ones I've lived every day in very distinct ways.

Nick Muldoon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). So what are the values we've got? We've talked about better with balance, and we talked about that a little bit. We also talked about engaged System 2 like this System 2 thinking. What are our values?

Dave Elkan:

Be the customer, give back, and [crosstalk 00:18:30]-

Nick Muldoon:

[crosstalk 00:18:30] was a big one, and commit to team. So better with balance, give back, be the customer, punch above our weight, Engaged System 2 and commit as a team. Go back to the conversation that we were having in 2017 around give back, that was something that was really System 2. How did we think about giving back to the community and what that meant to us as a company?

Dave Elkan:

I think it goes back to what you said before about the community in San Francisco we experienced and what we did here with Siligon and just making that a focal point for us to give back to the community. It doesn't build itself, like the community has to be actively built by somebody has to put their hand up and start it, and I think we did that. Since then, like we've enabled heaps of other people to be able to give back in a really easy kind of way like, "Let's host a meetup," "That's fine, here's our framework to go build that on." And also just the daily communication we have amongst each other on our Siligon Slack, which is just super valuable.

Nick Muldoon:

Super active, too.

Dave Elkan:

Oh, super active, especially in lockdown, lots of people on there talking about all sorts of things.

Nick Muldoon:

I think maybe one of the other things, so Dave and I experienced this at Atlassian, which was this idea of the Pledge 1%, but in our first or second year of Easy Agile, Atlassian along with Salesforce and a bunch of other companies came together to actually codify and build the foundation around Pledge 1% and ask other companies to commit to that. And we made that commitment in 2017 if I'm not mistaken, to do Pledge 1% donations and now, where I guess we're kind of doing Pledge 2% donations, but what was the drive behind our Pledge 1% to Room to Read?

Dave Elkan:

It's in part laziness, because I really want a system to these kinds of things and unfortunately, when you're starting a business it's hard to dedicate the time and to think about that. So I took the easy System 1 option, which is to go with what we experienced at Atlassian, which was to back Room to Read, which is a great initiative to help ensure that young ladies, specifically in third world countries, get at least a higher education, get out of primary school, get into high school, and once they've gotten to that point, it's far more likely they're going to be independent. And with that kind of thing, like that investment, it's like restarting at the beginning and enabling countries and people to help themselves. If they're educated, that's a huge step in the right direction to both fighting overpopulation, climate change, all these things which benefit from those people doing well in life.

Nick Muldoon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, continually improving their lot in life, right? Like raising standards of living through education.

Dave Elkan:

That's right.

Nick Muldoon:

And if we think about punching above our weight as one of these other things, I mean I remember that was something that we talked about before we wrote down our values, that was something that we really did focus a lot of energy on. You mentioned before, there were two of us and we had five products in the marketplace. I'm not exactly sure that was a great example of punching above our weight, because we might've struggled a bit, but what are some examples of where we've punched above our weight as a small team from regional Australia?

Dave Elkan:

One of our products that we built initially was really a bit of a thorn in my side, it was continually breaking and it wasn't playing to my strengths, which is traditionally front end development. So after that and getting burned by that and having to stay up all night and fix it, I opted towards apps which are more front end focused, and so we've built Easy Agile User Story Maps and Easy Agile programs and Easy Agile Roadmaps primarily as front end apps. As a matter of fact, Easy Agile Roadmaps, for the first two years, didn't even have a server, it was just a static file in a bucket in CloudFront. That's the way Atlassian Connect works, it allows you to host apps that way, and that really can't break, it's just providing a different view on Jira in essence, but architecturally, it's quite simple. So therefore, we could easily... that was a way of punching above our weight, which also allows better rebalance, so they're kind of complimentary in that respect. What other ideas [crosstalk 00:23:24]-

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, if not much can go wrong, then you don't have to be on call, and you don't have to fix things out of hours, so you don't wake up blurry eyed and fat finger and have a bug the next day that compounds the problem.

Dave Elkan:

And if you take the analogy too far, like you could think punch above your weight is like being able to punch someone really hard and then knock them over, but this is more like just definitely, you're running around the big [fur 00:23:44]. You're not even engaging in babble, you're just sidestepping it. That's why we've run those products, and until recently, we actually do have servers now for them, and once again, it's still very simple, but they're very well monitored so if something does go wrong, that we're on top of that.

Nick Muldoon:

I think one of the other aspects with respect to technology in punch above our weight, is we've quite often... I think maybe you mentioned before, with respect to Room to Read and the give back, the laziness, but we are lazy in certain respects and we just want to automate things. And I remember the XKCD comic that you share, with what is the right time to automate something and when do you automate it to get the return on investment that you want? But I feel like we've made some fairly good decisions around when to automate things and even around how we provide customer support or the old test and deploy, toying around with products, we've done these things at pretty good times so that we can deliver products to a global audience of a couple of thousand customers, from Wollongong out of timezone with those customers.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. It's also being ahead of the curve as well, so I think Inception Week, which is something we do every fifth week now, we give up one week to provide the team with the space to explore new things. Amazing things have come out of that, which otherwise, if you would just week to week, week to week, you would never actually realize, but when it comes to mind is our dev container, which is a docket container which contains all of the parts which are required to develop our apps. So you just check out this one repository, run a script and it sets up your entire develop environment. It's a great way for the team to share the tools that help them punch above their weight, so it's a huge punch above our weight thing and that came out of Inception Week. So I think Inception Week's a punch above thing, and also the dev container's a huge punch above thing.

Dave Elkan:

We used to have so many problems with individual versions of this or that on everyone's computer, and now that's just all gone, it's never happening again, it's never come back to bite us since, and I think it's an overwhelming success. Sure, it does need an all new RAM and all new CPU, but it does... we'll get there, like it's going to get better.

Nick Muldoon:

RAM and CPU are cheap, it's okay.

Dave Elkan:

You can never get time back, right?

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, absolutely. So when we think about these things, how intentional do you think we were around the values in our approach to building and scaling a company versus things that just kind of happened?

Dave Elkan:

For a large part of the starting of the business, there was a lot of, "Just get it done," kind of mentality stuff, which has to happen. However, I want to hop back to when we started, everything was chaos. I remember this, early 2018, mid 2018, we'd come in on Monday, go, "What are we doing today? What's this week? Let's look at the backlog and have a look." And there was no forethought whatsoever.

Nick Muldoon:

And we'd kick a couple of things off the backlog and we'd just work through on that weekend. That was it, right?

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, pretty much. And so you proposed the idea, it was at the beginning of the year, it must've been 2018. Was it 2019? Either way, let's just do one week on clarity, which is our internal CI room, essentially, and just knock out a bunch of products and problems. That was the first time we started really focusing, because since we had so many products, I think we actually might've sold them by now at this point. Yeah, I think we definitely had. However [crosstalk 00:27:28]-

Nick Muldoon:

But we still had Roadmaps, Story Maps, Clarity Week, EACS, like we had other internal systems that we used and the team was actually growing beyond Dave and me, and it was growing. There was Jared and Satvik and Rob, and so the team was growing at that point in time as well. So it gave us the opportunity to put a number of people onto one problem for a period of time, like a week.

Dave Elkan:

That's right, and from that came this idea of focus, and we started doing focused sprints, so product focus sprints, which highlighted another terrible problem of run over, if you did run over in your estimates, then you would have to come back like in nine weeks or something and it was just [diabolical 00:28:12].

Nick Muldoon:

That's right.

Dave Elkan:

So we dropped [crosstalk 00:28:14]-

Nick Muldoon:

What did we do? We did two weeks on Story Maps, two weeks on Roadmaps, two weeks on internal systems, two weeks on something and then one week on Inception Week?

Dave Elkan:

Inception Week. Yeah, I think [crosstalk 00:28:26]-

Nick Muldoon:

I can't even remember now, what that other thing was.

Dave Elkan:

It was nine weeks in total, wasn't it?

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah.

Dave Elkan:

[crosstalk 00:28:31] Roadmaps-

Nick Muldoon:

If you missed it and you didn't ship it, then we went onto the next product and moved that forward, and then we'd come back to it.

Dave Elkan:

In ages away. And it was super stressful for the team and we quickly destroyed that, the week we went with a more flexible approach to it, where we dropped the hard mandate of you have to exchange products now, we let them run over a bit and then we'd adjust the story points to the next one, blah, blah, blah. And then eventually, I'm scratching my memory, but essentially, we got to a point where we introduced opportunities, which was based loosely on Shape Up by Basecamp and we took a bunch of things from that, but most things of that didn't really gel with our way of working and our values.

Nick Muldoon:

I mean that whole opportunity cycle, we've evolved three or four times now.

Dave Elkan:

And they were ideally just two or four weeks of work, and then we'd do Inception Week and Tech Debt week, and we have a dedicated Tech Debt week as a mandate. We dropped that since, and we've got to now we have four weeks of work, which includes Tech Debt and then we have Inception Week, and that's kind of cool, right? Like we still have this mandate of Inception week, not Tech Debt week. That's the last thing; I feel like the mandates... because it's like kick starting your motorbike, you've got to really give a good kick and that's essentially what we've been trying to do over the last three years, is like get this thing running. I think we've-

Nick Muldoon:

Built momentum.

Dave Elkan:

The engine is now running... yeah. The engine is now running and we're pulling the clutch out. It's just that the mandates slowly fall away and the team finds their own way, but I still feel that, that cycle is the most important thing, that five weeks where we stop, everyone knows what's happening. Because if it just runs off into the future forever, you can't compute that in your mind, but you can see forward five weeks and go, "I'm going to plan this work, it's not going to be done to a Nth degree because that's kind of a bit weird," it's just like, "Let's try and achieve this and let's bite off one bit at a time." Then we have a break with Inception Week, let our creative juices flow and then we'll come back to it the next round.

Nick Muldoon:

Right, so I have to call timeout here. So this is a sidebar for everyone listening at home; Dave just used this analogy of kick starting the motorcycle and then pulling the clutch out. So one of the things that Dave does tremendously well, is he grabs these analogies and he uses these analogies to simplify what I otherwise feel can be fairly complex kind of concepts, and simplify them and communicate them really nicely. That's not one I've heard before but there's a new one we can add to the repertoire, Dave. I love it.

Dave Elkan:

Thanks, mate.

Nick Muldoon:

What other sorts of things? Because I guess we're charting this journey over five and a half years, where it's gone from Dave and Nick and the addition of Satvik and Teagan and Jared and Rob and Brad, and a few people over time, to the point today where we are 27, 28 people. What are some of the other markers along the way, that we've kind of gone through, that have shifted or evolved how we operate? Like the Easy Agile operating system that we've talked about in the past.

Dave Elkan:

Well, it's something that we've just discussed in the execution kind of level. Obviously, every six months, everything just goes and explodes and you have to fix it, like there's always some major thing that happens every six months, and I feel like that's good and that's healthy, and that continue to run into those things. Either they're internal or external and I feel like we're dealing with an external one right now, which I don't really want to touch in this podcast, but I think that they're healthy for the business to adapt to. But certainly, I think in that time, like really understanding that it's the people that count, right?

Dave Elkan:

The business is in there, like it's a thing, but it's nothing without the people who worked for it, and it's in service of the people who work here, as well as the customers. And so that's something we've come out of it. What do you think, Nick? Like the cultural aspects of what we've built, what do you think stands out to you?

Nick Muldoon:

I certainly think there's these inflection points. I mean, I remember a conversation with Jared when we were in Crown Street Mall, and it was in 2019 and we were talking with the team around the kitchen table there, and we could get eight people around this kitchen table and we were talking about growing the team to take advantage of the opportunity and responding to requests from customers and all that sort of stuff. I think Jared said, "Well, I quite like it the way it is."

Nick Muldoon:

And then I fast forward to an interview with Jared, which went into the five year video that we saw just before Christmas and that was around his trajectory and how he's evolved and adapted professionally and personally along with the company. I think that's the story for all of us as team members, we've all kind of been on a journey together and we're all learning and adapting together. We do live, in many respects, we do live this Agile approach where we do reflect and we take the time and we think and we experiment with new approaches to getting work done.

Nick Muldoon:

Even, I think... and we've been talking about this a bit recently with respect to pace, that first version of our learning and development program, where we wanted to provide funding for people to go and pursue something that they wanted to learn about. But we got that out, "Hey, that was a morning's worth of work," we put out an L&D, people started using the L&D program, and we called it our Version one of our L&D program, and today we're on Version, I don't know, 1.4 or whatever it is, of our L&D program. There's a lot of things that have gone out and we tweak and we improve them over time to make them ever better and better suited, perhaps, to the current state of play within the team. Is that fair?

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, it is. It is, and I think that; A, I've never worked at a business who has anything like that, and where they actively encourage you to use it, spend the money, make yourself better. If you make yourself better, the team will get better, if the team gets better, the customers get better outcomes, and the company continues to improve, and it will be probably a better place for you to work in the future. So it's really a holistic kind of perspective, rather than, not narrow minded, but myopic or focused on just output. It's outcomes of output and I think that could be another value of ours, if we were to have seven, it'd be outcomes over output. So really stopping, having that permission to stop and think, and system to it and think about what it is you're trying to achieve, rather than just blindly doing stuff.

Dave Elkan:

So from a developer's perspective, the fastest code is the code that doesn't exist, and so if you can do something differently, which doesn't require 100 steps or just decide, "Hey, this is really tricky right now, this bit of code we're trying to work on or this feature is really hard. Can we just delete the feature?" And we did it on notice, I know that sounds pretty bold, but quite honestly, that kind of discussion is really healthy to have. I want to encourage the team to think that way and I think that learning development is also something you can do to bring people into it, look at their trajectory as a way of gauging their abilities, and giving them really... throwing fuel on the fire in that respect and seeing them ramp up in their ability, and help those around them.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, so take us through that, because that's something that we definitely talked about a few times, like when we've been looking at candidates and in a hiring huddle around candidates, we've talked about those that are on a certain trajectory and that we think that we can accelerate that trajectory. Where did that come from?

Dave Elkan:

Where do thoughts come from? I'm not sure, that's a good question. I couldn't tell you, but I think it's pretty obvious when you look at someone's CV and you see... now, there's nothing wrong with people who have long tenured positions, but if you talk to someone and they can't really say what they've done in the last 10 years and they've donned that one position for 10 years and they haven't really got anything striking they can tell about how they've made that better, that kind of says a lot about that person. Maybe they would come in and they'd just coast... they're a coaster, right? If they're coasting, that's fine, it's their call, but at the same time, we look for people who are actively trying to make their impact bigger through their work, help those around them. And you can see that, you can see, "Oh, look. They've been at the same company, that's fine, but they've gone and done these different roles or they've seen this kind of improvement in their approach."

Nick Muldoon:

This comes back down to that article, that Financial Review article, the mid-career annuity, so this was an article that we must've been kicking around in 2016, 2017, and it was around a Japanese term, mid-career annuity. You could have 20 years of experience in a role or you could have 20 first years of experience, and I think early on, and maybe it still occurs these days, I think it probably does, but it felt like we were getting 20 quarters of experience. Over that five year period, there was always some big, new challenge that we needed to learn and adapt and incorporate into the business over the first five years. So we were always learning and adapting, and we wanted folks that were on a similar journey and they were learning and incorporating and adapting and experimenting themselves.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah, it's something definitely, that can be learned, and I think that if you bring on new stars, they can just get that, this is what they do by default because you've put them into that environment. But some environments, especially older companies, can be fairly stagnant and static, so that just reflects on people's CVs. Either there's some kind of reason why the company won't give them a promotion or give them opportunities to chase, how we have a different approach where we throw too many opportunities at people, I think sometimes, and I've seen people using their L&D so much, it is actually impinging on their better with balance value. I'm like, "Whoa, this is fantastic but don't forget you've got kids and you've got to help look after them," and [crosstalk 00:39:41]-

Nick Muldoon:

Temper your enthusiasm, yeah.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. So that's something to look for.

Nick Muldoon:

Stopping and reflecting on five and a half years, what's the purpose of the business, what's the goal over the next couple of years?

Dave Elkan:

Have fun, learn, what about you?

Nick Muldoon:

Definitely learning.

Dave Elkan:

Stay in business.

Nick Muldoon:

Oh, yeah. Stay in business, sustainable growth is always a good one. I think that's important. Yeah, I don't know, it's interesting. I feel like some days, it can be really fun and other days, it's not fun at all. That's probably due in large part, like when we started this, we were not in service of anyone but ourselves and one another, and now I feel like we are in service of a team of people that are themselves in service of the customer because we've got a couple of thousand of them. So it's the responsibility and the accountability's changed, and the way that fun comes about is, these days... it used to be fun to have lamingtons and chat, and these days, typically, there's someone else in the crew that is organizing the event that often participate in that I find fun and enjoyable with the rest of the team, rather than being able to carve out that time and do that.

Nick Muldoon:

I remember when we roped in a bunch of folks from iAccelerate and we went into town and we'd go into town and we'd go and we'd get a Laksa in town and we'd get a bowl of Laksa. It's been harder to do that in the past 12 months, given the global environment and all that sort of stuff, so hopefully we can find a bit more of that in 2022.

Dave Elkan:

And maybe ramen. There's ramen now.

Nick Muldoon:

Oh, and it's great, you know it.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. I think refining what we do and continuing to think more about that, so specifically with the engineers, I like to use a goal based... goals are big at Easy Agile, I think you should talk a bit about goals, but we use them to help guide people in chasing down things they want to achieve, and we can align those things with what the business does to an extent. Then, you can actually go and achieve your professional and goals through the business and the business is the vehicle to do that, rather than having to it outside. That's really cool, like find that harmony there so both Easy Agile can succeed and the people who work here can succeed.

Dave Elkan:

I think it actually is quite difficult, like you go, "Hey, take a step back, think about what you want to achieve, give that to me, and then I'll see what I can do to change the course of the business to help you accomplish that. What can we do? Maybe there's a middle ground we can chase down together." And that's something new to me and I'm kind of using that instead of performance reviews so make sure you do your goals, people. [crosstalk 00:42:44]

Dave Elkan:

But yeah, also you've made sure, you want to look back in time and you want to see yourself in the future, reflecting with the team. When they've gone and moved on, [crosstalk 00:42:56]-

Nick Muldoon:

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I was even chatting with Elizabeth Cranston this week and I was saying, "I can picture in the future, you're living down at Narooma down the coast and I can come down and have a cheese and biccies with the families and you're looking over the bay at Narooma or something, and we're reminiscing on this period of time at Easy Agile." I can totally see that. Yeah, I think it's great and I think just on the goals, the goals are important personally, and we've talked a lot about goals in the past, with respect to tenure vision for the families and that sort of stuff.

Nick Muldoon:

But it's also for the business, I remember we had okay hours in place from getting the business off the ground, we've revised them every year, we've learned and adapted a lot over the last couple of years in how we think about our objectives and our key results. And the fact that we write them on a quarterly basis and we review them on a quarterly basis, but we've got these objectives that align with a business goal that's three years out, and it all kind of flows. I mean, I think we're a lot more mature around that aspect of our... I don't know, would I say strategic planning? Vision goal setting over an extended time period? We're a lot more mature around that today than we were two or three years ago. That's really exciting as well. [crosstalk 00:44:33]

Nick Muldoon:

Come back to what you were saying before about the backlog. We'd come in on a Monday morning, and we go, "What are we going to work on this week?" And we kind of worked over a couple years, we worked it out so that, "Ah, here's the vision for the product." It was a longer term thing, and we've elevated that and it's not like, "Hey, what are we doing for the business this month?" It's now, "Here's our longterm trajectory for the business." We've been elevating that, that's pretty exciting, I think.

Dave Elkan:

And at the same time, trying to get the team to lift their line of sight as well.

Nick Muldoon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dave Elkan:

And look out further afield, but not too far. You want them to be looking at what's happening next week and next month as well, but also what's the goal, what are we chasing down? What's the bigger picture? And I think that's starting to happen.

Nick Muldoon:

What's the analogy there about golf, Dave?

Dave Elkan:

Oh. No, can you tell me? I can't remember.

Nick Muldoon:

It was this analogy about golf, like you've got to look where you're going to hit the ball and you've got to look up. You don't want to look at the tee, you want to look beyond the tee so that you... not beyond the tee, beyond the hole, sorry. You want to look beyond the hole.

Dave Elkan:

That wasn't my analogy, that's why I don't remember, but I do remember someone telling us that one. But it's a good one, like it wasn't even an analogy, isn't that the literal thing that the golf tutor would do? It's like, "Where are you looking?" And then they go, "Oh, I'm looking at the hole." "No, no, you've got to look further than the hole. Look up where you want the ball to go, and then away it goes."

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, raise your sights.

Dave Elkan:

Raise your sights, yeah. And if you are looking at your feet, then you're probably not going to go far, but if you do look up and take stock, you can probably... that's actually a soccer analogy I can give you, like from my soccer coach, like you've got to point your toe where you want the ball to go. And that's just the magic thing, it just works. You just put your foot next to the ball with the pointing at the corner of the goal you want it to go in and you kick it, and then it just happens.

Dave Elkan:

There's these funny little hacks like that and I think that's a longterm vision thing. If you are running a business which doesn't have that longterm vision and purpose, then you can go actually in multiple directions at once, and you're not going to make any progress. I think a good analogy I read was like with a team, if you imagine all the team members are tied to a pole with a rubber band and they're all heading in different directions, the pole's not going to move because everyone's just... and the company's going to stay static and still. But if everyone just goes in the same direction, then it's going to move along.

Nick Muldoon:

Shift it, yeah.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. And that's something that we've bitten off recently, is our purpose.

Nick Muldoon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), to help teams be agile.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah. It's one of those funny moments when we we're talking about, and we talked about it, we set ourselves a deadline for the sake of a better word, like we had our planning session coming up in a couple of weeks, so we sat down and talked about it. And we went around and around in circles, trying to discover what it is, not to be agile, but just, what is Agile? And we know [inaudible 00:47:45], but we were trying to codify that in words. And when you said that, like it's being agile, it was kind of one of those... the way I like to describe it is, an upside down A-moment, which is our logo as you can see on Nick's jacket there.

Dave Elkan:

So when that was proposed to me, I was like, "No, that's so silly." But I was like, "Oh, but I love it." And I'm not saying that being agile is silly, but the fact that it's so simple, that's what I like about it, it's easy, it's simple, and there's a lot there if you dive into it.

Nick Muldoon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Well, why don't we wrap it there? I think that's a good place to end.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

Our purpose is to help teams be agile and doing that, we're doing that for ourselves, we're constantly trying to learn and adapt and experiment with new things, being Easy Agile and as our team members here. So I hope that was a useful little tidbit and journey from Dave and I on how we got Easy Agile to this point, and some of the things that have been on our mind.

Dave Elkan:

Yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

Thank you, Dave.

Dave Elkan:

Thank you, Nick. That was fun.

Nick Muldoon:

That was fun. Oh, goody.

‍

‍

"It was great to chat with Alana and learn from her experience" - Sean Blake

In this episode, I was joined by Alana Mai Mitchell. Alana is a results coach, author, podcast host, and Senior Product Development Manager at one of Australia's largest banks where she works with Agile teams every day.

She has over 13 years experience in digital financial services and coaching. She's spoken live on Channel 10 here in the Australian media and has had her mental health story featured in publications, like The Daily Mail and Mamma Mia. She's the author of a book, Being Brave, and she's the host of the Eastern Influenced Corporate Leader Podcast.

We covered a lot of ground in today's episode. We talked about:

• The importance of putting your hand up and telling your manager when you want to be challenged more and to be exposed to new opportunities.
• Building trust with your team and disclosing some vulnerabilities about yourself.
• Alana's mental health journey over the course of six years, and that journey continues today. What she's learned and what we can learn from her experience to better look after our teams and people in our community.
• Servant leadership and being a generous leader.
• The importance of authenticity and direct communication.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as I did.

Transcript

Sean Blake:

Hello, welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. My name's Sean Blake and I'll be your host today. Today, we have a really interesting guest and a fantastic episode ahead for you. Our guest today is Alana Mai Mitchell. Alana is a results coach, author, podcast host, and Senior Product Development Manager at one of Australia's largest banks where she works with Agile teams every day. She has over 13 years experience in digital financial services and coaching. She's spoken live on Channel 10 here in the Australian media and has had her mental health story featured in publications, like The Daily Mail and Mamma Mia. She's the author of a book, Being Brave, and she's the host of the Eastern Influenced Corporate Leader Podcast.

Sean Blake:

We covered a lot of ground in today's episode. We talked about communication styles. We talked about the importance of putting your hand up and telling your manager when you want to be challenged more and to be exposed to new opportunities. We talked about the importance of building trust with your team and disclosing some vulnerabilities about yourself. We covered Alana's mental health journey over the course of six years, and that journey continues today. What she's learned and what we can learn from her experience to better look after our teams and people in our community. We talked about going first in servant leadership and being a generous leader. The importance of authenticity and direct communication. I hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as I did. Let's get started. Alana, thanks so much for joining us on the Easy Agile Podcast today. It's great to have you here.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Thanks so much, Sean.

Sean Blake:

Before we jump into our conversation, Alana, I'm just going to do an acknowledgement to country. We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we're recording today, the Watiwati people of the Tharawal speaking nation, and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. We extend that same respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples who are tuning in today.

Sean Blake:

Well, Alana, there's so much to talk about today. The background is, we used to be colleagues in the financial services industry. We bumped into each other again out of the blue at Agile Australia '21 Conference, just at the end of last year, which was a great conference. We thought we'd have you on the podcast because you've got so many different stories to tell, but I thought maybe we could start this episode by talking about your career journey and how working with Agile Teams has weaved into your career trajectory.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Yeah, sure. Agile really came into the forefront right back in 2013. I always remember my first Agile training. We had a team day, where I was working at the time. We had an external facilitator come in because the Agile framework was something totally new to financial services at that time. We played Lego. We had each of our wider team was divided into smaller teams, like scrum teams, all this new terminology. Then we were building island and we had an island each and the product owner was feeding user stories in from the customer. Partway through we were building, I think, a rocket launcher and then no, we didn't want to rocket launcher anymore.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

We wanted to tweak it. We had to adapt to things on the fly. I always remember that experience because it was so transformative, just having such a direct and collaborative way of working with people on a project. To this day, of all the Agile trainings and experiences that I've gone through, it's always the ones that are really interactive that I've remembered the most and gained the most and taught them, like learnt them myself as a participant and then taught them to other people as well.

Sean Blake:

Along the way, do you think, you've been through all these training sessions and you've been working with teams on the ground. What have you found from Agile, which is a big topic, but what have you found to be the most transformative and the most helpful from the way that these teams used to do things to the way that they do them now?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I would say communication. What I found was, because I had the contrast with both, I've worked in Water Force style projects and Agile projects as well. I think the biggest part is the amount of effort and rigor that we would go through reviewing requirements and have those be delivered into technology. Then it go quiet and you not hear from technology until they come back with something and they're like, "I've got a baby." You're like, "What kind?" The difference with Agile is that you are able to co-create them.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

You're creating with your customer or your end user, if you're working with an internal user, and then you are also working with technology and finding out what kind of constraints technology has or what kind of ideas they have as well. You have that ability to communicate with the dev. Sometimes your devs are on-shore, often cases they're offshore. We're all remote now, so it doesn't make as much difference as it did when we were in the office. You can really just pull away a lot of the process that gets in between people and have conversations. That's what I really think is the most transformative part.

Sean Blake:

Great. Yeah, so that communication. Do you feel like the communication throughout COVID and working remotely has been more challenging? Are you one of those people that find those face-to-face communication skills, you really prefer the face-to-face or has remote been okay for you? Because I know some people have struggled. Some people have found it easier to be on Zoom all the time.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Well, I mean, when I go in the office and we have that brief time where we were back in the office, I had a smile on my face the whole time. Because I just love seeing people and I'd go around and walk over to my team and say, "Hey, how are you going?" Just catch up with them. I think the one piece that's missing for me in the remote working whilst there's greater flexibility, you can do multiple things at the same time. You focus a lot of your work. You can get a lot more done quicker. I do find that informal relationship building, you need to actually schedule in time or pick up the phone out of the blue and connect with someone.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Whereas in the office, I would just find that because people were there and I don't know, you might be having lunch at the same time or going downstairs for something at the same time or even the corridor conversations that happen after the meeting where you can just chase someone or ask someone a question or they chase you and you just get things done. It's just different. I'd say it's more, the catch ups are more scheduled and formal, I find in a remote work setting.

Sean Blake:

I feel the same way. I feel the small talk and the talk about the weekend on Zoom is much harder for me and much more tiring to try and sustain that than in person. It becomes more naturally. I really have to make a big effort, especially on one-to-ones with people in the team when I'm trying to check in on their health and wellbeing and how they're going at work. I just find that much more exhausting than what I do in person. I think it's just those nonverbal communication skills and you can see people's body language easier when you're in the office.

Sean Blake:

Someone's slumped at their chair for six hours out of a seven-hour work day. Then you're like, "Oh, something's wrong." If you know that you've got to get on Zoom and try and pretend to be happy and that everything's okay, then you can fake it a little bit easier. Of course, there's loads of benefits to remote work, as you say. That human element personally, I find it's much more challenging to replicate using digital tools. Maybe there'll be more innovation that comes, but the time will tell on that.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Yeah. On that, I wanted to add some of my friends in the technology space. Talking about the metaverse and how at the moment you and I are having this conversation through screens. I'm in my space, in my house, and you can see my painting in the background and I can see that you've got a podcast set up. One of my friends was talking about how, he's an architect, and so he was thinking about how we create digital spaces. When we meet digitally, if we were meeting as our avatar, what kind of space would facilitate better conversation? That blew my mind when he was talking about that. I was like, "Oh, I hadn't even thought of that." Absolutely, you could meet in a virtual space because we're doing what we've got with the tools that we have today, but the tools can change.

Sean Blake:

I guess it's almost certain they will change. I can't see that Zoom will be the market leader forever. I'm sure there'll be things that come along very soon that will try and replicate some of those physical experiences that we miss so much of being in the office and having those social experiences together. Alana, I'm wondering about the teams that you work with now or in the past, those Agile teams, do you have any tips for people who are new to Agile teams or maybe they're coming in?

Sean Blake:

They want to improve their communication, whether they're remote or in office, and improve their organization's Agile maturity, but they're just finding it a bit of a struggle. Do you have any tips for people who are just, they're butting their heads up against the wall and they can't seem to make progress with some of those patterns and habits that you talked about, like taking requirements away and not knowing what's happening for so many months or years before you hear something back from technology? How do you actually start to influence that culture and behavior, if you're new to Agile?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I'm going to take a slightly different approach on that to answer your question. Because the thing that came to mind for me was when I in Outward Bound, which is a remote wilderness organization in 2012 in the US. I was instructing there. One of the frameworks that they use is William Glass' Choice Theory. Choice Theory talks about that we have five needs, and I'll put myself on the spot. Well, I'll mention some of them, because I can't remember all of them. There's like need for fun. Some people have a high fun need. Then there's like need for power, like feeling powerful. There's like, love and belonging, is another important need. There's two others, which I can't recall right now. I think when you are coming out of a situation, from a perspective, you've tried a couple of times when you're approaching it, and not getting anywhere, I would have a look at what needs am I, myself looking to get met out of this communication.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Then on the flip-side, what needs is my communication partner or the team that I'm working with? What is the most important need for them? As we were talking about remote working, like the fun need. People love to have fun and you can actually have fun at work. It doesn't need to be separate. Thinking about like, if you have a high fun need, and you also notice your team has that as well. How can you address that in your communication style or bring out some kind of activities that can bring that to life? I would always go back to what are my needs and what are the needs of other people that I'm working with? Because when you're working with different teams, they have different agendas, they have different goals. If you can figure out what you have in common, it's a lot easier to bring another team or people in those team on the journey, once you figured out what the common ground is.

Sean Blake:

That's great advice. Think about it from their point of view, rather than just what you need and your own agenda and try and adapt to your approach to them. That's really good. I saw this quote recently, Alana, which reminded me a little bit about your mental health journey, which we'll talk about more in a moment. The quote was about, when you're looking for a new role or a new job, you shouldn't just look for a great company to work for. You should look for a great manager to work for, because the influence and your experience as an employee, working for a manager, is often so much more important than and influential than just picking a great or a well-known company to work for. Have you found that to be true in your own career?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Oh, yeah. I have found that some really phenomenal leaders. In a previous organization that I was working in, I like to keep learning and growing all the time. In previous roles, sometimes I get bored. It happens. That's really valuable to organizations because I'm constantly looking at where to improve things. I had a time where my manager was focused on other things and learning and development wasn't as important. Then I had a lady named Christina come in and Christina was like fire. She was just, "This is what we got to do." Open to change, really clear communicator, she's from the US. She's really direct in a compassionate way and she's really progressive as well. I found because of her influence in the organization.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Also, through my willingness to put my hand up and say, "I'm willing to participate." Which is, for the people who are tuning in, it's not just about the leader creating the opportunities for you and saying, "Hey, present to this general manager forum or executive general manager forum." Or whatever it is. It's also about you saying, "Hey, I'm willing and I'd love to." And communicating what you are after. We met on that path and I had some of the most, stronger success working with Christina. I was fortunate at that the culture was also really great. The immediate team culture needed to shift as well, which is part of why Christina came on board, and the company culture is really good.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I would say on the point on like manager over culture is that when you are someone who is progressive and you're wanting to shape the culture for the better, you're going to find cultures that need a little attention or need a little work or things that aren't quite as performing as well as they are. With the sales perspective, opportunity plus. If you go to a culture and everything's amazing, you're sure you can make it a little bit more amazing. Really, when you have the support of your manager, who's, you see these initiatives and they're going to say, "Okay, go for it. I've got this GM forum coming up that you can present at, or let's find your sponsor. Let's find your mentor." That the two of you working as a team can be at the forefront of the new culture, which impacts the rest of the culture.

Sean Blake:

Interesting. I don't know if I've ever been in a culture that's perfect and overachieving and too good, but absolutely you can get too comfortable and complacent in roles and you can almost just be a little bit shy from putting your hand up for those opportunities. Do you think there's many cultures out there that are too good? How do you assess the quality of a culture before you accept the role and start working in that team?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Oh, good question. I always asked, what's the vision and how does it relate to this role? I want to hear it from the hiring manager before I join a company. What I'm looking for is I'm asking that question to multiple people. I'm looking for a congruence, about the hiring manager sees a similar story as to what their peer, who's maybe interviewing in the second interview or their leader in the third interview. I'm looking for those things to match up, because that's telling me there's consistency. It's just, I'm getting the same story. That they're also communicating well. That would be a sign to me. Yeah, that's about what I do.

Sean Blake:

That's good. Good tip. Alana, you have a quote on your website, which talks about your mental health journey. It says, "I have totally recovered from five mental health breakdowns across six years, where doctors once talk would me, I would be homeless." That sounds like a lot of hardship and a lot of sweat and tears and pain over many years. Do you want to walk us through a little bit of that journey and what you've learned about yourself through those experiences?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Oh, yeah. Thanks for pulling that out from the site, Sean. In 2013, I started to notice that things weren't right. I wasn't feeling myself. I sought help from a counselor, career counselor. Because I thought, "Is it my career?" I said, "Am I not in the right job?" I spoke to a psychiatrist and a psychologist and they did a little bit of an investigation, but no one really got to what was going on. Then I made some quick decisions in my career, which I look back on and I think, "Wow, I really was in the throes of it and not thinking clearly at all when I made those choices." I found myself, about November 2014, in between roles. As someone who was previously really ambitious, like high-achiever, chronic high-achiever without having a role and a career prospect at the moment back then was a big deal.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I had what was called a psychotic episode. Essentially, that was like me, believing deluded thoughts and not having a really strong grip on reality, having some story going on in my head that wasn't true at all. It ended up because I was taken by ambulance to hospital. Then still at that point, people didn't really know what was going on. I was a in mental health ward and came out from that, started on medication, which improved things. I thought, and this is part of why I had the multiple psychotic episodes, is that I thought that the stress of being in between jobs or stressful situations at work, I thought they were the triggers for the psychotic episodes.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I would take the medication for a while, get better temporarily, think everything was normal, stop the medication. Then six months later I would have another breakdown. Then that happened over six years and I realized towards the fifth and final, so that was when I was running a coaching business that had a few clients at the start and then we didn't have any clients at all. I essentially ran out of money and got into debt. Then when the doctor learned about my financial situation, he said, "You're going to be homeless." I was so offended. I was like, "How dare you." I was like, "No, I will not. I will not." I look back now and I'm so thankful for him sharing that with me, because he provided me with a choice. Something to push against and choose another way. He activated my will, from me going from being offended to being thankful, where I'm at today.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I charted my way out of that. Now, I have well-managed schizophrenia and I take medication. I'll be taking medication for the rest of my life. It's part of who I am. I don't experience like, some people have a lot of appreciation for, because I know that they're in their mental health journey. It's not all smooth sailing, even after they have an answer of a diagnosis. It still can be challenging in there's up days and down days. For me, I'm consistent. It's been now coming up to four years since the doctor and I had that conversation in the hospital. Life is just incredible since then.

Sean Blake:

That's great. I'm so happy to hear that. Thank you for sharing your story with our audience. I think it's really important, isn't it? To be vulnerable and to share the truth about things that have happened in the past. Do you think that there's something that we can learn? With the people that you work with now, do you have a clearer understanding or are you looking for signs of people in your life who might be struggling with some of the similar issues and what can we do as people in our own communities and working with teams to look out for each other and to better support each other with some of these mental health issues front of mind so that we can be more supportive?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I always listen for and check in with how the team is doing and it's not just, you ask how are you, and you're listening for more than what they say. If they say they're good, how are they saying it? We had that conversation before about the remote working and it's different. To come to the, are you okay, and we have the, are you okay days. Someone asked me in the office where we were actually working together. They're like, "Are you okay, Alana?" I couldn't answer her. It's not always as simple as getting a no, sometimes it's, you don't get a response. Then the alarm does go off. I really think taking in all the points of interaction that you have with someone and aligning to, is that consistent with how do they were, is there something different, check in with them, how is it going? If you're having a conversation, great. If they're sharing with you, even better.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

If they're not, you can always just check in with yourself and being like, "Is it something you need?" As to, why are they not sharing or is that something that's going on with them as well? The other piece I wanted to tie it, bring it back to the Agile leadership piece and from the conference that Agile Australia that we were at. I really see that building trust with teams is so key. We're in this remote working environment or hybrid working environment, depending on what office you're in. It really is important to build trust with your team. One of the quickest ways you can do that is by sharing vulnerably with what you have to share. I don't mean going for exposure and putting yourself in vulnerable situations where you are uncomfortable with what you share.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

It's disclosure, so it's something that you're 100% comfortable within yourself, and you've accepted it within yourself and you share that with your team in openness. When you do that, you see that your team also, they hear it and they mirror it as well. You go first and they share. The mental health example, I shared that on LinkedIn. I've shared it in situations with my team. Then I've been invited to talks and I've had people approach me. It really builds without having to go through a lot of, I ask this thing of this person, do they deliver it above and beyond expectations when I ask for it? How many times do you need to go through that process before you trust someone versus you, coming out and creating an environment of trust through of vulnerability? I do caveat that it's like not oversharing, it's sharing what you're comfortable with at that point in time, and that might change as you go on.

Sean Blake:

Interesting. Does this apply to leaders as well? I know that you've spoken about being a generous leader in the past, and that reminds me of servant leadership, which is another kind of Agile phrase that you hear come up quite a lot. This idea of going first, disclosing what you're comfortable with to your team, even as a leader, showing vulnerability is really important. I know in my experience, if you can share some of the honest and harsh realities of what it's like to be in your position, then your team are more empathetic with the challenges that you have.

Sean Blake:

Because a lot of people assume that when you are in a position of leadership and responsibility, then things are easier because you can just delegate or you've got budget to solve some of these problems, but it's not actually the reality of it. The reality of it is you struggle with things just like anyone else. By sharing and disclosing things with people at all levels of the organization, then that helps to build empathy and a bit more care and support no matter what level you're at. Are there other things or habits or qualities of a generous leader or a servant leader that you've seen or that you try and model or encourage?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

The big one that stands out for me is authenticity. Really knowing yourself, knowing what your leadership style is, knowing what your challenges are, what your strengths are, what you're working on and being authentic about that. When you feel something, sharing what you feel, not having to feel like you need to say it a different way or sugarcoat it, being able to speak your mind in a way that's direct and compassionate. We're not going for like arrogance, and we're not going for wishy washy. We're going for direct and compassionate, then share what's in your heart, so authenticity. Those are the leaders that you, I'm so glad you brought up empathy because when you're vulnerable, empathetic, and authentic, those are the leaders that really stand out for you and me.

Sean Blake:

That's great advice. Authenticity, direct communication, build empathy. All right, thanks for sharing that.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

You're welcome.

Sean Blake:

Alana, how did you decide that you wanted to write a book about some of your experiences and can you tell us about how your book, Being Brave, has changed your life and how you think about sharing your story?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I naturally have a lot of things going on. I love projects. I love it, that's why I'm in projects. Because I love setting a goal and reaching it. The company I was working at had done a number of workshops and I got to a point where I didn't have as many activities going on. I was like, "Oh, that's really interesting. I don't have as much stuff going on." This was just at the start of the pandemic in 2020. A friend, a really dear friend of mine said, "Try meditation. Try meditation daily." I meditated each day and I had been surrounded, my network is very much of a coaching network. I know a lot of coaches and they had written their own books as well. I was on the radar and I was meditating and I got the idea to write a personal memoir about my story.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

It's really interesting that even in through that process of doing a lot of personal development work and going through the process of writing the story, there were still some things in that, that I wasn't quite comfortable owning yet. It's been, since I wrote the book that I've accepted that. In a book, if people read it, I talk about psychotic episodes. I don't talk about schizophrenia because it was all later when I was asked to do a media thing about schizophrenia, that I was like, "Okay, yep. Time to own that." I feel like the book at a point in time had me accept all that had happened with unconditional love and then to still, modeling that piece of going for disclosure and not exposure. Still, I had my fragility on what I wasn't ready to disclose yet. Since then, that had progressed further.

Sean Blake:

That's awesome. That therapy you're sitting down to write the story actually helped flesh out the story itself and you came to terms with some of those things that happened. What has been the reception to the book?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

Most people, when they pick up the book, it's a short book, so some people even call it a booklet, because it's 11,000 words. It's short. They say, "Wow, I read that in an hour and a half, in one sitting. I couldn't put it down." someone had said, "It's the story of the famous rising from the ashes." They can take a lot of inspiration from it. The point of the book and a lot of what we're talking about vulnerability is going first as the leader. You set an example that others can follow in, so that will flow into their lives as well. The book is set out with a story and a few questions at the end that people can go through for their own insight.

Sean Blake:

Great, awesome. Alana, is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience before we start wrapping up the episode today?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

I did, because I know this is about Agile more so, and that's a really important topic to your audience. I did write and have a think about after that conference we went to, Agile Australia, about what is beyond the Spotify model? Because the Spotify model is very, word is spoken about it at the moment with the crews and the tribes and squads of course, and the chapter lead models and all that they have, which I'm sure everyone tuned in would be really familiar with. I started to think about, what are the things that are relevant beyond the Spotify model? What's next? If your organization is at a point where you've already at your job at some of that, and you're looking for what's next. I did write an article about that. It's on LinkedIn, and I'll give it to you. If you want to, you can put it in the show notes.

Sean Blake:

That's awesome. We will definitely do that. Where can people go to find out more about you? Where can they buy your book or visit your website?

Alana Mai Mitchell:

My site is www.alanamaimitchell.com. On there is more about my story. There's a few things about coaching, which may be relevant. I'm not coaching at the moment, I'm more focused on my career in financial services. Then the book is on Amazon and it's in English and also in Spanish. There's the audio book and also the print book and the eBook.

Sean Blake:

Awesome. Well, Alana, thanks for disclosing what you've disclosed today and sharing your story with us. I've learned a lot about your experiences, and I've got a lot to think about, to reflect on, how to be a more generous leader. Thanks for spending time with us and being part of the Easy Agile Podcast.

Alana Mai Mitchell:

You're so welcome. Thanks for having me on the show, Sean.

Sean Blake:

Thanks, Alana.

"It was great chatting to Caitlin about the importance of the Team Retrospective in creating a high performing cross-functional team" - Chloe Hall

In this episode, I was joined by Caitlin Mackie - Content Marketing Coordinator at Easy Agile.

In this episode, we spoke about;

• Looking at the team retrospective as a tool for risk mitigation rather than just another agile ceremony
• The importance of doing the retrospective on a regular cycle
• Why you should celebrate the wins?
• Taking the action items from your team retrospective to your team sprint planning
• Timeboxing the retrospective
• Creating a psychologically safe environment for your team retrospective

I hope you enjoy today's episode as much as I did recording it.

Transcript

Chloe Hall:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. I'm Chloe, Marketing Coordinator at Easy Agile, and I'll be your host for today's episode. Before we begin, we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which I am recording today, the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal Speaking nation and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We extend that same respect to all Aboriginal and to Strait Islander peoples who are tuning in today. So today, we have a bit of a different episode for you. I'm going to be talking with Easy Agile's very own Content Marketing Coordinator, Caitlin Mackie. Caitlin is the Product Owner* of our Brand and Conversions Team*. Now this team is a cross-functional team who have only been together for roughly six months. And within their first few months, as a team, mind you they also had two brand new employees, they worked on a company rebrand.

Chloe Hall:

A new team, a huge task, the possibility of the team being high performing was unlikely at this point in time. So, the team was too new to have already formed that trust, strong relationships, and psychological safety, but somehow they came together and managed to work together, creating a flow of continuous improvement and ship this rebrand. So, I've brought for you today Caitlin onto the podcast to discuss the team's secret for success. Welcome to the podcast, Caitlin.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thanks, Chloe. It's a bit different sitting on this side. I'm used to being in your shoes. I feel [inaudible 00:01:45]. I feel uncomfortable. [inaudible 00:01:46].

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. It's my first time hosting as well, so very strange. Isn't it? How are you feeling today?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Good. I'm excited. I'm excited to chat about our experience coming together as a cross-functional Agile team, and hopefully share some of the things that worked for us with our listeners.

Chloe Hall:

Yes, I know myself, and I'm sure our audience is very excited to hear what your team's secret to success was. Did you want to start off by telling us what was this big secret that really helped you work together as a team?

Caitlin Mackie:

That's a great question, Chloe. And that's a big question. I'm not sure if there's one key thing, I suppose, it is that ultimate secret source or that one thing that led to the success. I'm sure we all want to hear what that is. I would also love to know if there's just this one key ingredient, but I think something for us, and probably one of the most memorable things that really worked for us, and there was a lot for us to benefit from doing this, was actually doing our retrospectives. So that's probably the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to what led to our success.

Chloe Hall:

Okay. Yeah. In the beginning, why did you start doing the retrospectives?

Caitlin Mackie:

So, we were a new forming team, like you mentioned before, and we seen retrospectives as another Agile ceremony, and we saw other teams doing it and they were having a lot of success from it, so we became to jump on that bandwagon. And I think with being a new forming team, there are so many things that come into play. So, you're trying to figure each other out, how we all like to work and communicate with each other, all of that. And we were the first ever team dedicated to owning and improving our website. And we also knew it was likely that we'd be responsible for designing and launching a rebrand.

Caitlin Mackie:

So when you try and stitch all of that together, and then consider all those elements, we knew that we needed to reserve some time to be able to quickly iterate and call out what works and what doesn't. And what we did understand is that retrospectives are a great opportunity for the whole team to get together and uncover any problematic issues and have an open discussion aimed at really identifying room for improvement, or calling out what's working well, so we can continue to do that. So, I think retros allowed us to understand where we can have the most impact and how to be a really effective cross-functional Agile team.

Chloe Hall:

Wow. That is already so insightful. Yeah, it sounds like the retrospectives really helped you to gain that momentum into finding who your team is, becoming a well-working, high-performing cross-functional team. So, how often were you doing the retro? Were you doing this on a regular cycle, or was it just, "Okay. We have a problem. Some blockers have come up, we need to do a retro"?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. I think initially retro, we kind of viewed retros as this thing where like, "Oh, we've done a few sprints now. We should probably do a retro and just reflect on how those few sprints went." It was kind of like this thing. It was always back of our mind. And we knew we needed to do it, but weren't really sure about the cadence and the way to go about it. So now, we do retros on a Friday morning, which is the last day of our weekly sprint. And then we jump into sprint planning after that. So after bio break as well, so let the team digest everything we talked about in retrospectives. And then we come into sprint planning with all the topics that we're discussed, and we will have a really nice, fresh perspective.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

So, I think this works really well for us because everything is happening in a timely manner. We've just had a discussion about the best things that happened in the sprint or what worked really well, so you want to make sure you can practice the same behavior in the following, and vice versa for the improvements that you want to make. So, that list of action items that come out of a retrospective provide a really nice contact, context, sorry. And you have them all in mind during sprint planning.

Caitlin Mackie:

So for example, in the previous sprint, it might have come up that you underestimated your story points or there wasn't enough detail on your user stories. So, with each story or task that you are bringing into the sprint, you're then asking the question, is everyone happy with the level of detail? What are we missing? Or we've only story pointed this or two, is it more likely to be a five? So, everything is really fresh in your mind, and I definitely think that helps create momentum. When you've got the whole team working to figure out how you can be more effective with every sprint.

Chloe Hall:

That's such a great point that you just made Caitlin. And I love how going from doing the team retrospective, that you actually can take those action items and go into your sprint and put them into place straight away. It's really good. Otherwise, I feel like if you do the sprint retrospective on the Friday, and you're like, "Okay, these are our action items," get to Monday sprint planning and you're just thinking of the weekend. That [inaudible 00:07:20]

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. They're super fresher mind for everyone. So, it might not work for every team, but we find it works really well for us, because we're being really deliberate with how we approach sprint planning.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. And then with that, I could see how doing the retro, how it could easily go over time, but then your team has sprint planning scheduled after. So, it's like you can't go over time. How have you managed to kind of time box that retrospective?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, that's a really, really good question. And it is on purpose as well that they are scheduled closely together. Som as mentioned above, the discussion you've had in the retrospectives provides a nice momentum going to the sprint planning, but it does mean we have to watch the clock. And initially, this can be quite awkward, because you want to make sure that everyone feels heard and that everybody has the same opportunity to contribute. And I think this responsibility falls on the scrum master, or the product owner, or whoever's facilitating the retrospective to call it out and make sure everyone has the chance to be heard. You'll naturally have people tell the longer story or add a lot of extra context before getting to the point. And then you'll have others that will be a lot more direct. And I'm a lot like the latter. I struggle to get to the point, which doesn't work well when you're trying to time box a retrospective, right?

Chloe Hall:

And I can relate, same personality.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yes. So with this, I think it really comes down to communicating the expectation and the priority from the get go. With our team and with any team, you will want to figure out who you can perform really well and continually improve to exceed expectations and be better and learn and grow together. And I think if you all share that same mindset going into the retrospective and acknowledging that it's a safe

space to have difficult conversations. And as long as you're communicating with empathy, the team knows that it's never anything personal, and it's all in the best interest of the team. And that then helps the less direct communicators, like myself, address their point more concisely and really forces them to be more deliberate and succinct with their communication style.

Caitlin Mackie:

And that's really key to being able to stick to that time box, I think. And it does take practice, because it comes down to creating that psychological safety in your team. But once that's there, it's so much easier to call out when someone's going down a windy track, and bring the focus back and sort of say, "I hear you, what's the action item?" And just become a lot more deliberate.

Chloe Hall:

Wow. I couldn't even imagine like how hard it would be, with the personalities that yourself and I have, just trying to be so direct and get rid of all the fluffy stuff. I mean, look at what it's done to form such an amazing team that we have. So, you mentioned that aspect of psychological safety before. And how do you think being in a new cross-functional team... Only six months together, you had those new employees, do you think you were able to create a psychological safety space at any point?

Caitlin Mackie:

That's another fantastic question. And I feel like, honestly, it would be best to have a team discussion around this. It'd be interesting to hear everybody's perspectives around what contributes to that element of psychological safety and if everybody feels the same. So, I can't speak for the team, but my personal opinion on this or personal experience is that creating an environment of psychological safety really comes down to a mutual trust and respect. And at the end of the day, we all share the same goal. So, we all really, really respect what each other brings to the table and understand how all of these moving parts that we are working on individually all come together to achieve the goal. So, when we're having these open discussions in retros, or not even in retros, just communicating in general really, it's clear that we're asking questions in the best interest of the team and individual motives never come into play, or people aren't just offering their opinion when it's unwarranted or providing feedback, or being overly critical when they weren't asked to do so.

Caitlin Mackie:

So, none of those toxic behaviors happen, because we all respect that whatever piece of work is in question or the topic of discussion, the person owning that work, at the end of the day, is the expert. And we trust them, and we don't doubt each other for a second. And I think the other half of that is that we're also really lucky that if something doesn't go as we planned, we're all there to pick each other up and go again. So, this ties quite nicely into actually one of our values at Easy Agile is commit as a team. And this is all about acknowledging that we grow and succeed when we do it together, and to look after one another and engage with authenticity and courage. Som I may be biased, but I wholeheartedly believe that our team completely embraces that. And there's just such an admiration for what we all bring to the table, and I think that's really key to creating the psychological safety.

Chloe Hall:

I love that your team is really embracing our value, commit as a team and putting it into place, because that's what we're all about at Easy Agile, and it's just so great to see it as well. I think the other thing that

I wanted to address was... So again, during this cross functional team, and you've got design and dev, how do you think retros assisted you in allowing to work out what design and dev needed from each other?

Caitlin Mackie:

For sure. So, for some extra context for our listeners as well, so in our team, we've got two developers, Haley and David, and a designer, Matt and myself, who's in the marketing. So, we're very much a cross-functional little mini team. So, we all have the same goal and that same focus, but we also are all working on these little individual components that we then stitch together. So,, I think... We doing retros regularly. What we were able to identify was a really effective design and development cycle. So, we figured out a rhythm for what one another needed at certain points. For example, something we discovered really early was making sure that we didn't bring design and dev work into the same sprint. We needed to have a completely finished design file before dev starts working on it. And that might sound really obvious, but initially we thought, "Oh, well, if you have a half finished design file, dev can start working on that. And by the time that's done, the rest of the design file will be done."

Caitlin Mackie:

But what we failed to acknowledge is that by doing that, we weren't leaving enough capacity to iterate or address any issues or incorporate feedback on the first part of that design file, or if dev started working on it and design then gets told, "Oh, this part right here, it's not possible," so the designer is back working on the first part. And it just creates a lot of these roadblocks. So in retros, this came up and we were able to raise it and understand that what design needed from dev and what dev needed from design in order to make sure we weren't blockers for each other. And the action item out of the retro is that we all agreed that a design file had to be completely finished before dev picks up the work.

Chloe Hall:

I think it's so great that you were able to identify these blockers early on. Do you think like doing the retro on a weekly reoccurring basis was able to bring up those blockers quickly, or do you think it wouldn't have made a difference?

Caitlin Mackie:

No, definitely. I, a hundred percent, think that retros allowed us to address the blockers in a way more timely and effective manner. And we kind of touched on that before, but yeah, retros let you address the blockers, unpack them, understand why they're happening and what we need to do to make sure they don't happen again. So, for sure.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. Yeah. I guess I want to talk a little bit now about the wins, the very exciting part of the retro, the part that we all love. So, how important do you think the wins are within the retro?

Caitlin Mackie:

So important. So, so, so important. It's like, when you achieve something epic as a team, you have to call it out. Celebrate all the wins, big, small. Some weeks will be better than others, but embrace that glass half full mentality. And there's always something to be proud of and celebrate, so call it out amongst

each other, share it with the whole company, publicly recognize it. Yeah, I think it's so important to embrace the wins. It just sort of creates a really positive atmosphere when you're in the team, makes everybody feel heard and recognized for their really positive contribution that they're making. And I think a big thing here as well is that if you've achieved something epic as a team, it's helpful for other teams to hear that as well, right? You figured out a cool new way to do something, share it. If it helped you as a team, it's most likely going to help another team.

Caitlin Mackie:

So I think celebrating the wins isn't even just reserved for work stuff either, right? If somebody's doing something amazing outside of work or hit a personal goal, get behind it.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

To celebrate all the wins always.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. And I think it's so good how you mentioned that it's vital to celebrate the wins of someone's personal life as well, because at the end of the day, we're all human beings. Yes,, we come to work, but we do have that personal element. And knowing what someone's like outside of work as well is an element to creating that psychological safe space and team bonding, which is so vital to having a good team at the end of the day. Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, you hit the nail in the head with that. We talked about psychological safety before, and I definitely think incorporating that, acknowledging that, yeah, we are ourselves at work, but we also have a whole other life outside of that too, so just being mindful of that and just cheering each other on all the time. That's what we got to do, be each other's biggest cheerleaders.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah, exactly. That's the real key to success. Isn't it?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, that's it. That's the key.

Chloe Hall:

So, you've been working really well as a new cross functional, high performing Agile team. How do you think... What is your future process for retros?

Caitlin Mackie:

We will for sure continue to do them weekly. It's part of the Agile manifesto, but we want to focus on responding to change, and I think retros really allow us to do that. It's beneficial and really valuable for

the team. And when you can set the team up for success, you're going to see that positive impact that has across the organization as a whole. So yeah, we've found a nice cadence and a rhythm that works for us. So, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

Is that what they say? Is that the saying?

Chloe Hall:

I don't know. I think so, but let's just go with it. [inaudible 00:19:02], don't fix it.

Caitlin Mackie:

There we go. Yeah.

Chloe Hall:

You can quote Caitlin Mackie on that one.

Caitlin Mackie:

Quote me on that.

Chloe Hall:

Okay, Caitlin. Well, there's just one final thing that I want to address today. I thought end of the podcast, let's just have a little bit of fun, and we're going to do a little snippet of Caitlin's hot tip. So, for the audience listening, I want you to think of something that they can take away from this episode, an action item that they can start doing within their teams today. Take it away.

Caitlin Mackie:

Okay. Okay. All right. I would say always have the retrospective. Don't skip it. Even if there's minimal items to discuss, new things will always come up. And you have to regularly provide ways for the team to share their thoughts. And I'll leave you with, always promote positive dialogue and show value and appreciation for team ideas and each other. That's my-

Chloe Hall:

I love that.

Caitlin Mackie:

That's my hot tip.

Chloe Hall:

Thanks, Caitlin. Thanks for sharing. I really like how you said always promote positive dialogue. I think that is so great. Yeah. Well, thanks, Caitlin. Thanks for jumping on the podcast today and-

Caitlin Mackie:

Thanks, Chloe.

Chloe Hall:

Yeah. Sharing your team's experience with retrospectives and new cross functional team. It's been really nice hearing from you, and there's so much that our audience can take away from what you've shared with us today. And I hope that we've truly inspired everybody listening to get out there and implement the team retrospective on a regular basis. So, yeah, thank you.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thank you so much, Chloe. Thanks for having me. It was fun, fun to be on this side. And I hope everyone enjoys this episode.

Chloe Hall:

Thanks, Caitlin.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thanks. Bye.