Easy Agile Podcast Ep.3 Melissa Reeve, VP Marketing at Scaled Agile

"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.

‍

Gerald shared that companies often face the same challenges over & over again when it comes to implementing agile, but the real challenge and most crucial is overcoming a fixed mindset.

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"Gerald helps massive companies work better together while keeping teams focused on people and on the customer. I'll be revisiting this episode."

Gerald also highlights the difference between consultants & coaches, and the value of having good mentors + more

I loved this episode and know you will too!

Be sure to subscribe, enjoy the episode 🎧

‍

Transcript

Sean Blake:

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Easy Agile Podcast. Sean Blake here with you today. And we've got a great guest for you it's Gerald Cadden a Strategic Advisor and SAFe Program Consultant Trainer at Scaled Agile, Inc. Gerald is an experienced business, an IT professional, Strategic Advisor and Scaled Agile Program Consultant Trainer SPCT at Scaled Agile. Thanks, Gerald. Welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. It's really great to have you on as a guest today, and thank you for spending a bit of time with us and sharing your expertise with our audience on the Easy Agile Podcast.

Sean Blake:

So I'm really interested and I'm interested in this story that... For all the guests that we have at the podcast, but can you tell me a little bit about your career today? I find that people find their way to these Agile roles or the Agile industry through so many diverse types of jobs in the past. Some people used to be plumbers or tradies, or they worked in finance or in banking. How did you find your way into working at somewhere like Scaled Agile?

Gerald Cadden:

Good morning, Sean. Thanks for having me here guys. I'm very happy to be here with you guys today. Career things are always an interesting question. I'm 53 and so when I look back I wonder how do I get to where I am? And you can often look at just a series of fortunate events. And I worked in retail shoe stores and then I decided to do something in my life. Did an IT diploma then did a degree and I started working in the IT side. I pretty much started as a developer because that was where the money was and so that's where you wanted to go. I didn't stay as a developer long. Okay. All right. I was a terrible developer so I wasn't good at it. It was frustrating.

Gerald Cadden:

I moved into some pre-sales work and that led me to doing business analysis and I really liked the BA work because I got to work with people and see changes. I could work with the developers, still got to work really directly with the customer which was much more interesting for me. So I spent a lot of time in BA doing the development work, doing business process reengineering my transitioned over to rational unified process. When it was around spent countless hours writing use cases doing your mail diagrams, convincing people on how to make the changes on those. And then Agile came along and I had to make a complete brain switch. So all of this stuff that I'd learned and depended on as a BA suddenly disappeared because Agile didn't require that as an upfront way of working. It required that to be in the background if you wanted it and it was more a collaboration.

Gerald Cadden:

So about 2004, 2005 started working with Agile a lot more by this time I was living in the U.S. So that's where I got my agile experience, stayed there for a long time. Got great experience and then I moved over to working with SAFe around 2011. The catalyst for that as I was working for the large financial firm in New York with a team there. And we were redesigning a large methodology for them to implement Agile at scale. Went to a seminar in 2011 at an Agile conference saw Dean Leffingwell presentation on SAFe and just looked up and went, "Well we can stop working on our methodology. It's done."

Gerald Cadden:

So hardly after that meeting I ran outside and tackled Dean Leffingwell because I wanted him to look at my diagrams and everything and give me some affirmation that I was doing the right thing. Dean is got a very frank face and he pulled his frank face and he looked at me and just said, "You know what? Just use SAFe?" And I'm like, "Yeah, we will." And so I started my SAFe journey around that time and we implemented that financial company and I've been on that journey ever since.

Sean Blake:

So take us back 10 years ago to 2011. And you're working at this financial company, you've heard of this concept of SAFe really for the first time you started to implement it. How did the people at that company respond to you bringing in this new way of thinking this new framework? It sounded you already had the diagrams on the frameworks and the concepts forming in your mind did you find that an easy process? I think I already know the answer, but how complex was that to try and introduce SAFe for the first time into an organization of that magnitude?

Gerald Cadden:

Yeah, this is a very large financial firm, a very old financial firm so very traditional ways of working. So what's interesting is the same challenges SAFe comes up against today they're present before SAFe even began. And so the same challenges of the past management approaches trying to move to faster ways of working was still there. So as we were furiously drawing diagrams in Visio, trying to create models for people to understand it was hard to create a continuum of knowledge and education that would get people to move from the mindset they had to the mindset we wanted them to have. And it was an evolving journey for myself and the team that I was working with. I work with a really great guy and his name is Algona, a very, very smart man.

Gerald Cadden:

And so the two of us we're always scratching our heads as to how to get the management to change their minds. And we focused on education, but it was still a big challenge. I finished on the project as they started with SAFe. I moved to different management role in the company that we continued the work there. Michael Stump he used to work for Scaled Agile I think he works now at a different company, but he continued a lot of that work and did a really good job and they did implement SAFe. They made changes, but they faced all the same challenges. The management mindset overcoming moving away from the silos to a more network structured organization. Just the tooling, just the simple things was still a challenge and there's still a challenge today. So the nature of the organization is still evolving even in the modern day Agile world.

Sean Blake:

You mentioned there that part of the challenge is around mindset and education. Have you found any shortcuts into how you change a team's mindset? The way they approach their work, the way that they approach working with other teams in that organization? I assume the factor of success has a lot to do with, has the team changed their mindset on the way they were working before and now committed to this new way of working? And can you talk to us a little bit about how do you go about changing a team's mindset?

Gerald Cadden:

Maybe I'll change the direction of your question here, because what I've found is usually you don't have to work too hard to change the mindset of a team. Most of the teams are really eager to try new things and be innovative. You only come across some people in teams who may be their career path has got them to a certain point where they're happy with the way the world is and they don't want to change. The mindset you really need to change is around that leadership space and that's still true today. So the teams will readily adapt if management can create the environment that allows them to do it and if they can be empowered. But it's really... If you want to enable the team it's getting the leadership around them to change their mindset, to change the structures that are constraining the teams from doing the best job they can.

Gerald Cadden:

And so that for me was the big discovery as you went along and it's still true today. As Agile has been evolving I've noticed that people don't always put leadership at the top of the list of challenges but for me it's always been at that top of the list. A lot of people want to look at leadership and say things about them unflattering things, but you have to remember these are human beings. And the best way to come to leadership is to really begin with a conversation, help them understand. They know the challenges, but we need to help them understand what's causing the issues that are creating those challenges.

Gerald Cadden:

As you work with them and educate them you can to open their minds up a little more. Does that mean they'll actually change? Not necessarily. Political motivations, ideologies other things constrained leadership from moving. But conversations and education I think are the way to really approach leadership. And getting to know them as a person, take an interest in their challenges, take an interest in them as an individual. So create that social bond is an important thing. As a consultant that was always hard to do because as a consultant you're always seen as an external force and it's hard to build that somewhat social relationship with that leadership and build that trust.

Sean Blake:

Yeah, that's so true. Isn't it. I remember on an Agile transformation that I was on previously, how Agile coach really would spend just as much time with the leadership team as they would with us the Agile team. And it seems strange that the coach was spending so much time trying to really coach the leadership team on how they should think about this new way of working, but you put it in the right context there it's so important that they create that environment for their people and for their teams to feel safe in trying something new. Yeah, that's really important.

Gerald Cadden:

I think if you looked at how Agile evolves, when you look at the creation of the Agile manifesto and its principles and then the following frameworks like ScrumXP, et cetera it evolved from a team perspective. So everybody made the assumption that we needed to create these things for the teams to follow, but as people worked with teams they found that it wasn't the teams at all the teams adapt, but the management and the structures of the organizations are not adapting. And so that's really where it went.

Gerald Cadden:

I can't recall the number of countless Scrum implementations you worked on and you just hit that ceiling of organizational challenges. And it was always very frustrating for the teams. I think there's a an opposite side to that too is that too many in the Agile world just look at the teams as the center of the world and you can't approach it from that way either the teams are very important to delivering value to the customers, but it's the organization as a whole that delivers value. And I think you really have to sit back and just say, "The teams are part of that how do we change the organization inclusive of the teams?"

Sean Blake:

Okay. That's really interesting. Gerald, you've spoken a bit about teams and mindset, when you go into an organization, a big auto manufacturer or a big airline or a financial services company and they're asking for your help, or they're asking for your training, how do you assess where that organization is up to? What's their level of maturity from an Agile point of view? Do you have organizations that are coming to you who have in their mind that they're ready to go SAFe and then you turn up on day one and it turns out no one has any real idea about what that type of commitment looks like?

Gerald Cadden:

Yeah, it's a good question. Because I think as I look back at the history of this, in 2011, 2012 when SAFe really got going, as you went forward I mean, there was no concept of where to begin. Consultants were just figuring it out for themselves and like most consulting or most methodologies they got engaged in an IT space and at the team level. And people would try to grow from the team level upwards. And at some point we need to know I've struggled a lot with this because I was just trying to figure out where it is that. So my consulting hat was always on to sit down, talk to people about their challenges, find a way to help figure out how to solve the challenges whether it was going to be Scrum or SAFe or whatever is going to be right.

Gerald Cadden:

Those are just tools in the toolbox. But when Scaled Agile as I was working with... Excuse me, as I was working with SAFe, Scaled Agile brought out the implementation roadmap. It produced so much more clarity that came later in my time with SAFe and I wish it had come earlier because it really began to help me clarify that initial thing that we call getting over the tipping point. How to work with the organization you're talking to, work with the right people, understand their challenges, help them understand what causes those problems, which is the more traditional ways of working the traditional management mindset, help them connect SAFe as a way to overcome those challenges and begin to show them. If you looked at the roadmap it's this contiguous step-by-step thing, but what you find in reality is there are gaps between those steps and in those gaps is the time you as a transitional team are having lots of conversation with the management.

Gerald Cadden:

If you put them through a training class they're not going to come out of the class going, "Oh, wow that's it. We know what to do." It takes follow-up conversation. You have to have one-on-ones one on many conversations, cover topics of gains so you can remove the assumptions or sorry the misassumptions. So it's a lot of that kind of work that the roadmap its there for those who are implementing SAFe today use it. It is one of the most helpful tools you'll have.

Sean Blake:

Awesome. Yeah. I think just acknowledging the difference between the tools in the toolbox and then the other fact that you're dealing with humans and you're dealing with attitudes and motivations and behaviors and habits there's two very different things there really. It sounds you need to take them all together on that journey.

Gerald Cadden:

Yeah. A side to that we train so many SPCs like SAFe program consultants. We train them, training them out of classes all the time with us and our partners. The thing that you can, you can teach them about the framework, but you can't necessarily teach them how to be a good consultant or a good... I want to say I use the term consultant and coach, right?

Sean Blake:

Yes.

Gerald Cadden:

Sometimes I like to say a good consultant can be a good coach, but a good coach can't necessarily be a good consultant because there's another world of knowledge you need to have like how do you sit down and talk to executives? How do you learn the patients and the kinds of questions you need to ask, how do you learn to build those relationships and understand how to work the politics? So there are things outside the knowledge of an SPC that they need to gain. So young people coming in and running to do this SPC course I want to prepare you for everything, but it gives you the foundations.

Sean Blake:

So when you're in a organization or you're coaching people to go back to their organization how do you teach them those coaching skills so that when they come in and they've got to learn the politics, they've got to identify the red flags, they've got to manage the dependencies, they've got to bring new teams onto the train. How do you go about equipping that more human and communications of the toolbox really?

Gerald Cadden:

I think you can obviously teach the fundamentals of the framework by running through the training courses. But mentoring for me is the way to go. Every time I teach a training class I make it very clear to people when they go back and they're starting a transformation don't go this alone. Find experienced people that have done this and the experience shouldn't just be with SAFe their experience should be having worked with large organizations having experience with the portfolio level if necessary. Simply because there are skills that people develop over years of their career if they don't have at the beginning.

Gerald Cadden:

I mean, if I look back at some of the horrific things I had said in meetings and in front of executives my boss would put his hands up in front of his face because I was young and impulsive and immature and I see that today. So when I first came to the U.S I worked with some younger BAs and they would say things in a meetings and you quickly have to dance around some things to, "We didn't really want to say that right now." So I think mentoring is the skill. We can teach you the tactical skills, but teaching you the political skills, the human skills is something that takes mentoring and time.

Sean Blake:

Mentoring so important in that context. Isn't it?

Gerald Cadden:

Yeah.

Sean Blake:

Okay. So let's rewind 12 months ago to March 2020, a month that's probably burned into a lot of people's mind is the month that COVID changed our lives for the foreseeable future. I know that Easy Agile had a lot of content out there, articles about how to do remote PI Planning, how to help your virtual teams work better together and we didn't know that COVID was coming we just saw this trend happening in the workforce and we had this content available.

Sean Blake:

And then I was checking out our website analytics and we had this huge spike in what I assume were people in these companies trying to work out for the first time, how to do PI Planning virtually, how to keep very literally their release trains on the tracks in a time where people were either leaving the state, working from home for the first time, it's really like someone dropped the bomb in the middle of these release trains and people scrambling on how we are we going to do this virtually now? Did you have a lot of questions at the time on how are we going to do this? And how have you seen companies respond to those challenges?

Gerald Cadden:

Yeah. I remember being in Boulder, Colorado in January of 2020 and I just come back from vacation in Australia and that's when COVID was coming around and you were hearing about things in January, 2020. I was talking with my colleagues and we were wondering how bad this is going to be within two months the world was falling apart. And for us I think a good way to tell that story is to look at what Scaled Agile did. We knew our business that it was very reliant on our partner success and it still is today. And so as we began to see the physical world of PI Planning and training, as we began to see that completely falling apart the company had to quickly adapt.

Gerald Cadden:

We already had a set of priorities set for the PI and we implement Scaled Agile internally in the company. At the time we're running the company as a train itself because it's 170 all people. So they had to reprioritize the different epics, we pushed a new features and it was all about what do we need to change now to keep our partners afloat by getting them online and a really good team at Scaled Agile in a really cross-company effort to get short-term online materials created to keep the partners upright so they could keep teaching. They could find ways to do this, to do PI Planning, to do they're inspecting adapts all online. And so we pushed out a lot of material just simply in the form of PowerPoint slides that they could then incorporate into tools like Mural, Al tool. SAFe collaborate we went about developing this and we've been maturing that over time.

Gerald Cadden:

And so now we're in a world where we have a lot more stability. We saw a big dip like everybody else, but the question is, are you going to come out of that dip? And so what we did notice within probably even the second quarter of that year where the tail end of it we saw it starting to come up again, which our partners starting to teach more online. So the numbers told us that the materials we're producing were working. So for us it was just a great affirmation that organizing yourself the way we did organize yourself, the quick way we could adapt saved us. So Scaled Agile could have gone the way of a lot of companies and not being able to survive because our partners wouldn't have survived. We had the ability to adapt. So it's a great success story from my perspective.

Sean Blake:

Well, that's great. We're all glad you're still around to tell the story.

Gerald Cadden:

Yes we are.

Sean Blake:

And Gerald, whether you're reflecting on companies you've worked with in the past, or maybe even that internal Scaled Agile example you just touched on. Are there specific meetings or ceremonies or checking points that are really important as part of the Agile release train process? What are the things that really for you are mandatory or the most important elements that company should really hold onto during that really set up stage of trying to move towards the Scaled Agile approach?

Gerald Cadden:

So I interpret your question correctly. I think for me when you're implementing the really important things to focus on as a team first of all is the PI Planning. That is the number one thing. It's the first one people want to change because it's two days long and everybody has to come and it can cost companies a quite a significant sum of money to run that every 10 to 12 weeks. And so you will run very quickly as I had in the past in the car company you run very quickly into the financial controller who wants to understand why you're spending $40,000 a quarter on a big two-day meeting. And so they lie, they start questioning every item on the bill, but that's the most significant one.

Gerald Cadden:

PI Planning is significant. The inspect and adapt is the other one simply because at the end if you remove that feedback cycle, what we call closing the loop if you remove that then we have no opportunities to improve. So those two events themselves create the bookends what we get started with and how we close the loop, but there are smaller events that happen in between the team events are obviously all important. But more significant for me is the constant, the event for the product management team or program management team how are you going to filter them, excuse me.

Gerald Cadden:

Who are going to need to get together on a regular basis to ensure that then we call this the Sync. So this is the ART Sync or the POPM Sync. You need to make sure those are happening because those are these more dynamic feedback loops and ensure the progress of good architectural requirements or good features coming through so that when you get to PI Planning the teams have significant things to work on. So if you had to give me my top three events, PI Planning, inspect and adapt, and the ART Sync and product POPM Sync.

Sean Blake:

Awesome. I know there's always that temptation for teams to find the shortcuts and define the workarounds where they don't have to do certain meetings or certain check-ins, but in terms of communication it must be terribly important for these teams to make sure they're still communicating and they don't use the framework as an excuse to stop meeting together and to stop collaborating.

Gerald Cadden:

Yeah. I mean, I went through when I started implementing at the large car company in the U.S I decided to rip the bandaid off. They had several teams working on projects and they weren't doing well, when I looked at the challenges and decided we're going to implement SAFe some of the management they were, "Are you crazy? Why would you do this?" But they trusted me. And so we did rip the bandaid off and we formed them all into a not. We launched set up. And I remember at the end of the PIs some of the management have had a lot of doubts that were coming up after they sat through the PI and they said they just couldn't believe how great that was.

Gerald Cadden:

Even though the first PI was a little chaotic they understood the work and the collaboration, the alignment, just the discussions that took place were far more powerful for them. And teams were happier, they were walking out to a different environment. So it changed the mood a great deal. So I think the teams their ability to be heard in one of the most significant places is during PI Planning, they get that chance to be heard. They get that chance to participate rather than just be at the end where they're told what to do.

Sean Blake:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). So it really empowers the team.

Gerald Cadden:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Sean Blake:

That's great. So as a company moves out of the implementation phase and becomes a little bit more used to the way of doing things what's the best way for them to go about communicating that progress to the wider organization and then really evangelizing this way of working to try and get more teams on board and more Agile release trains set up so that it's really a whole company approach.

Gerald Cadden:

Yeah. A good question. So I think first of all the system demo that we do. So the regular system demos that take place, this is an event where you can invite people to. So when you get to the end of the program increment, the 10, 12, or the eight, 10 or 12 weeks and you're doing your PI system demo that's a chance for you to invite people that may be in the organization who are next on the list and they're going to be doing this, or they're curious, or if you have external suppliers who you're trying to get on board as part of the training have them come. Have them come to these events so they can just participate. They can see what goes on and it takes away some of the fear of what that stuff is. It gives them work much.

Gerald Cadden:

So the system demo whether you do it during the PI, but definitely the PI system demo and you want that one. So more ad hoc things and one of the things that I've seen organizations really fail to do is when they're having success the leadership around the train need to go out and I hate the term evangelize, but go out and show the successes. Get out and talk about this at the next company meeting present where they were and where they are now. But as part of that don't share just the metrics that show greater delivery of value show the human metrics, show how the team went from maybe a certain level of disgruntlement to maybe feeling happier and getting better feedback, show with how the business and technology have come closer together because they're able to collaborate and actually produce value together rather than being at odds because the system makes them at odds.

Sean Blake:

Awesome. Gerald is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience before we wrap up the episode? Any tips or words of encouragement, or perhaps some advice for those who are considering scaling up their Agile teams.

Gerald Cadden:

I think that the one piece of advice again, I'll reiterate back to the earlier point I made is as you are going through the implementation process and you're starting to launch your train and train your teams figure out how you're going to support them when you launch. Putting people through an SPC class or through all the other classes they won't come out safe geniuses. They'll have knowledge and they'll have the enthusiasm and have some trepidation as well, but you need good coaching. So figure out as you're beginning the implementation pattern where you're designing the teams et cetera, figure out what your coaching pattern is going to be. Hire the people with the knowledge and the experience work with a partner for the knowledge and experience. They shouldn't stay there forever if you work with consultants.

Gerald Cadden:

Their job should be to come in and empower you not to stay there permanently, but without that coaching and coaching over a couple of PIs your teams tend to run into problems and go backwards. So to keep that momentum moving forward for me it's figure out the coaching pattern. The only other one I would say too is make sure that you get good collaboration between product and the people who are going to be the product management role on architecture, get rid of the grievances, have them work together because those can stifle you. Get in and talk about the environments before you launch. You don't want funny problems when you, "Oh, the architecture is terrible." Okay. Let's talk about that before we launch." So just a couple of things that I think are really important things to focus on before you launch the train.

Sean Blake:

Awesome. I really appreciate that Gerald. I've actually learned a lot in our chat around. It's the same challenges that you had 10 years ago it's the same challenges that we have today. The really the COVID is the challenge of how do you focus on the mindset change. We've talked about the teams are eager to change. There might be a few grumbly voices along the way, but really it's about leadership providing a welcoming and safe environment to foster that change and the difference between being a coach and a consultant, the importance of mentoring. Wow we actually covered a lot of ground didn't we?

Gerald Cadden:

I may get some hate mail for that comment, but...

Sean Blake:

Oh, we'll see. Time will tell. Thanks so much Gerald for joining us on the Easy Agile Podcast. And we appreciate you sharing your expertise with us and the audience for the podcast. Thanks for having you.

Gerald Cadden:

Happy to do it anytime. Thanks for having me here today.

Sean Blake:

Thanks Gerald.

"I really enjoyed speaking with Melissa Reeve, VP of Marketing at Scaled Agile about how non-software teams are adopting a new way of working."

It's more important than ever to be customer-focused.

We talk about the danger of 'walk-up-work' and how to avoid this through proper sprint planning.

Melissa also gives an update on how agile is spreading to non-technical teams.

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Transcript

Sean Blake:

Hello everyone. And welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. We have a really interesting guest with us today. It's Melissa Reeve, the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile. We're really excited to have her on today. Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile, Inc. In this role Melissa guides the marketing team, helping people better understand Scaled Agile, the Scaled Agile Framework. In other words, SAFe and its mission. She also serves as the practice lead for integrating SAFe practices into marketing environments. Melissa received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and she currently resides in Boulder, Colorado with her husband, chickens, and dogs. Melissa, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Melissa Reeve:

It's such a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate it.

Sean Blake:

Great. That's great. I really like your enthusiasm straight off the bat. So what I'm really interested in hearing about, Melissa is a little bit about how you got to where you are today. What have been the highlights of your career so far and how as a marketer, did you find yourself in the Agile space?

Melissa Reeve:

Well, thanks for asking. And I have to tell you, but just before the podcast my husband knocked on the door and he was all proud because we just got a new set of chickens and one of the chickens had laid its first egg. So that's been the highlight of my day so far, not necessarily the highlight of my career.

Sean Blake:

So you'll be having scrambled eggs and eggs on toast probably for the next few weeks now.

Melissa Reeve:

I think so. So back to the career, I really fell into marketing. My background was in Japanese literature and language. And I had anticipated this great career and international business in Asia. And then I moved out to the Navajo Indian Reservation and just pivoted. Found my way into marketing and found my way into Agile right around 2013 when I discovered that there was an Agile marketing manifesto. And that really was a changing point in terms of how I thought about marketing. Because up until that point, it really considered marketing in what's termed waterfall. Of course, marketers generally don't use the term waterfall.

Melissa Reeve:

But then I started to think about marketing in a different way. And when I came across Scaled Agile, it brought together so many elements of my career. The lean thinking that I'd studied when I studied in Japan and the lean manufacturing, it was Agile marketing that I'd discovered in 2013 and just education and technology have always been part of my career. So I really consider myself fortunate to have found Scaled Agile and found myself in the midst of scaling Agile into both enterprises, as well as marketing parts of the enterprise.

Sean Blake:

Oh wow, okay. And I noticed from your LinkedIn profile, you worked at some universities and colleges in the past. And I assume some of the teams, the marketing teams you've worked in, in the past have been quite large. What were some of those structures that you used to work in, in those marketing teams? And what were some of the challenges you faced?

Melissa Reeve:

Yes, well, the largest company was Motorola. And that was pretty early on in my career. So I don't think I can recall exactly what that team structure is. But I think in terms of the impediments with marketing, approvals has always been an issue. No matter if you're talking about a smaller organization or a larger organization, it seems like things have to go up the chain, get signed off, and then they come back down for execution. And inherent in that are delays and wait states and basically waste in the system.

Sean Blake:

Right. So, what is Agile marketing then and how does it seek to try and solve some of those problems?

Melissa Reeve:

Well, I'm glad you asked because there's a lot of confusion in the market around Agile marketing. And I can't tell you how many news articles I've read that say marketing should be Agile. And they're really talking about lowercase Agile, meaning marketing should be more nimble or be more responsive. But they're not really talking about capital-A Agile marketing, which is a way of working that has principles and practices behind it. And so that's one aspect where there's confusion around Agile marketing.

Melissa Reeve:

And then another aspect is really how big of a circle you're talking about. In the software side when someone mentions Agile, they're really talking about a smaller team and depending on who you talk to, it could be anywhere from five to 11 people in that Agile team. And you're talking about a series of teams of that size. So when you're talking about Agile marketing, you could be talking about an individual team.

Melissa Reeve:

But some people, when they're talking about Agile marketing, they're talking about a transformation and transforming that entire marketing organization into an Agile way of working. And of course, in the SAFe world, we're really talking about those marketing teams that might be adjacent to a SAFe implementation. So, I think it's a good question to ask and a good question to ask up front when you're having a conversation about Agile marketing.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay. And for those people that don't know much about SAFe, can you just explain, what's the difference between just having a marketing team now working in a capital-A Agile way, and what's the difference between an organization that is starting to adopt Scaled Agile? What's the difference-

Melissa Reeve:

Sure.

Sean Blake:

...between those?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. So what software organizations found is that Agile teams, so those groups of five to 11 people, that way of working works really well when you have a limited number of software developers when you started to get into the world's largest organizations. So I think of anybody on the Global 2000, they might have tens of thousands of software developers in their organization. And in order to leverage the benefits of Agile, you needed to have cadence and synchronization, not only within a team, but across multiple teams up into the program level and even the portfolio level.

Melissa Reeve:

And the same holds true with large marketing organizations. Imagine you're a CMO and you have 6,000 marketers underneath you. How are you supposed to get alignment to your vision, to your strategies that you're setting if you don't have a way of connecting strategy to execution. And so the Scaled Agile Framework is a way of taking those Agile practices across multiple teams and up into the highest levels of the organization so that we're all moving in a similar direction.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay, I think that makes sense. And from a software team's point of view, one of the benefits of Agile is that it helps teams become more customer focused. And many would argue, well, marketing has always been customer focused. But have you found in your experience that maybe that's not so true? And when marketing teams start to adopt Agile, they realize what it really means to become customer focused.

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. I mean, you raised another great point because I think most marketers think that they're customer focused. Like many things in the world, the world is a relative place. So you can, in your mind, in theory, be thinking about the customer or you can be actually talking to the customer. So I just finished what I call the listening session. And it was during our hackathon, which is our version of an innovation, couple of days worth of innovation. So it was eight hours on a Zoom call with somebody South Africa. Just listening to her experience and listening to her go through one of our courses, slide by slide, by slide, explaining what her experience was at each step of the way.

Melissa Reeve:

So if you think about somebody who is sitting in a large enterprise, maybe has never met the customer, only knows the customer in theory, on one end of the spectrum. And you think about this listening session on the other end of the spectrum, you start to get an understanding of what we're talking about. Now, your question really pointed to the fact that in Agile practices, you're thinking about the customer every time. In theory, every time you write a story. So when you write a story, you write the story from the perspective of the customer. And I would just encourage all the marketers out there to know the customer personally. And I know that's not easy in these large organizations. It's sometimes hard to get face time with the customer, but if you aren't speaking directly to a customer, chances are you don't actually know the customer.

Melissa Reeve:

So find a way, talk to the sales folks, get on the phone with some of your customer service representatives. Go to a trade show, find a way to talk directly to the customer because you're going to uncover some nuances that'll pay dividends in your ability to satisfy the customer. And when you go to write that story again, it will be even more rich.

Sean Blake:

Oh, that's really good advice, Melissa. I remember from personal experience, some of these large companies that I've worked in, we would say, "Oh, this is what the customer wants." But we actually didn't know any customers by name. Some of us personally were customers, but it's not really the same thing as going out and listening to people and what did they find challenging about using that app or what do they actually want out of this product? So there's a huge difference, isn't there, between guessing what a customer might want or should want? And then what their day to day actually looks like, and what are the things that they struggle with? That's hugely important.

Sean Blake:

For someone who's in one of these big companies, they're in a marketing team, perhaps they don't have the power or the influence to say, "Okay, now we're going to do Agile marketing." What would your advice be for someone like that, who can see the upside of moving their teams in that direction, but they don't necessarily know where to start?

Melissa Reeve:

Well, there's a philosophy out there that says take what you can get. So if you are just one person who is advocating for Agile marketing, maybe that's what you can do is you can advocate. Maybe you can start building alliances within the organization, chatting casually to your coworkers, finding out if you have allies in other parts of the organization and start to build a groundswell type movement.

Melissa Reeve:

Maybe you can build your own personal Kanban board and start tracking your work through your own Kanban board. And through visualizing your work in that way, it's a little bit harder now that we're all remote, but should we get back into offices somebody could in theory, walk by your cubicle, see your Kanban board and ask about it. And now you might have two people using a Kanban board, three people. And really start to set the example through your mindset, through your behaviors, through your conversations in order to start getting some support.

Sean Blake:

Oh, that's really good. So be the change that you want to see in the organization.

Melissa Reeve:

Exactly.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay, that's really good. And when these companies are moving towards this way of working, and then they're looking to take the next level, let's say it starts in the software development teams and then say marketing is the next team to come on board. How does it then spread throughout the whole organization? Because I know from personal experience, if there's still that part of the organization that's working anti-Agile it actually still makes it really difficult for the Agile teams to get anything done. Because there's still the blockers and the processes and the approvals that you need to go through with those other teams. And I guess SAFe is the answer, right? But how do you start to scale up Agile throughout the whole organization?

Melissa Reeve:

Sure. And what you're talking about is really business agility, is taking the whole business and making the business Agile. And you pointed out something that's key to that, which is once you solve the bottleneck and the impediments in one area of the business, then it'll shift to another area of the business. So the advantage of business agility is that you're trying to keep those bottlenecks from forming or shifting. But what a bottleneck essentially does is it creates what we call a burning platform. So it creates a need for change. And that's actually what we're seeing in the marketing side is we've got these IT organizations, they're operating much more efficiently with the use of Agile and with the use of SAFe. And what's happening is the software teams are able to release things more quickly than the teams that are surrounding them, one of which could be marketing.

Melissa Reeve:

And so now marketing is incentivized to look at ways of changing. They're incentivized to take a look and say, "Well, maybe Agile is the answer for us." So let's just say that marketing jumps on board and all of a sudden they're cranking along, and except for that everything's getting stuck in legal. And so now legal has a case for change and the pressures on legal to adopt it. So there is a way to let it spread organically. Most transformation coaches will understand this phenomenon and probably encourage the organization to just go Agile all in, obviously not in a big bang kind of way, but gradually move in that direction so that we're not just constantly shifting bottlenecks.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay, that makes sense. And when these companies are trying to build business agility across the different functions, are there some mistakes that you see say pop up over and over again? And how can we avoid those when we are on this journey of business agility?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. So I feel like the most common mistake, at least the one that I see the most often in marketing, although I've seen it in software as well, is people thinking that the transformation is about processes or tools. So for example, in marketing, they might adopt a tool to "become more Agile." Maybe it's a Kanban visualization tool, or maybe they're being suggested to adopt another common ALM type tool. And so they adopt this tool and they learn how to use it, and they wonder why they're not seeing big improvements.

Melissa Reeve:

And it's because Agile at its heart is a human transformation. So we're really taking a look at in trying to change the way people think. One of the topics I speak on is the history of management theory. And while it sounds pretty dry, in reality, it's eye opening. Because you realize that a lot of the habits that we have today are rooted back in the 20th and 19th centuries. So they're rooted in assembly lines. They're rooted in French management theory, which advocated command and control.

Melissa Reeve:

They're rooted in classism. There was a management class and a laboring, and the management class knew the one best way of doing things. So more than a process, more than a tool, we're talking about transforming this legacy of management thinking into a way that's appropriate for today's workers. And I feel like that's the number one mistake that I see organizations making as they're moving into transforming to Agile, an Agile way of working.

Sean Blake:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Yeah, that's really interesting. And it really is eye opening, is it? When you look at how the nine to five workday came about, because that's the time when the factories were open and all the history around how organizations are structured. And it's really important, I think, to challenge some of those things that we've done in the past that worked back in the industrial age. But now we're moving into the information age and into these times of digital transformation. It probably doesn't work for us anymore, does it, some of those things? Or do you think some of those things are still valuable now that we have distributed teams, a lot of people are working remotely? Are there any things that come to mind that you think actually we shouldn't get rid of that just yet?

Melissa Reeve:

Oh, I'm sure there are. John Kotter has presented in his book, Accelerate, this notion of a dual operating system. So that you have the network part of the organization, which moves fast and nimble like a startup and then you have the hierarchical part of the organization. And the hierarchy is very, very good at scaling things. It's a well oiled machine. You do need somebody to approve your expense report. You do need some policies and some guidelines, some guard rails. And so we're not actually saying abolish the hierarchy. And I do feel like that's part of this legacy system. But what we are saying is abolish some of the command and control, this notion that the management knows the one best way, because the knowledge worker oftentimes knows more than his or her manager.

Melissa Reeve:

It's just too hard for a manager to keep up with everything that is in the heads of the people who report to him or her. So that's a really big change and it was a change for me. And I think why I got so fascinated in this history of management theory is because I came across some notes from my college days. And I realized that I had been taught these historic management theories. I'd been taught Taylorism, which stems from 1911. And I realized, wow, there's a lot of undoing that I've had to do in order to adopt this Agile way of working.

Sean Blake:

Well, that's great. Yeah, that's really important, isn't it? I've heard you speak before about this concept of walk-up work, especially in the realm of marketing. But I suppose, well, firstly, I'd like to know what is walk-up work. Why is it so dangerous, not just for marketers, but for all teams? And how do we start to fight back against walk-up work?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. So, marketers in particular get bombarded with what I like to call walk-up work. And that's when an executive or even a peer literally walks up, so think again about the cubicle farm, and makes a request. So how that looks in the virtual world is the slack or the instant message, "Hey, would you mind?" One is that it results in a lot of context switching and there's time lost in that context switching. And then the other part is rarely do these requests come in well-defined or even with any sort of deadline detach. In marketing, it might look like, "Hey, can you create this graphic for this email I'm sending out?" So now you've left your poor graphic designer with this knowledge that here she has to make a graphic, but they don't really have any of the specs.

Melissa Reeve:

So it's very, very helpful to put these things into stories, to follow the Agile process, where you're taking that walk-up work to the product owner, where the product owner can work with you to define that story, keep the person who's doing the work on task, not making them context switch or do that. Get that story in that acceptance criteria very well defined and prioritized before that work then comes into the queue for the graphic designer. And this is an anti-pattern, whether you're talking about an organization of 50 or 5,000.

Melissa Reeve:

And what I've found is the hardest behavior to change is that of the executives. Because not only do they have walk-up work, but they have positional authority too. And it's implied that, that person will stop working on whatever they're working on and immediately jump to the walk-up work being defined by the executive. So I feel like it's really dangerous to the whole Agile ecosystem because it's context switching, it interrupts flow and introduces waste into the system. And your highest priority items might not being worked on.

Sean Blake:

Okay. So how many people do you have on your marketing team at Scaled Agile?

Melissa Reeve:

We're pretty small, still. We've got about somewhere in the 20s, 23, 25, give or take or few.

Sean Blake:

So how do you-

Melissa Reeve:

I think right now we're three Agile teams.

Sean Blake:

Three. Okay. So those 20 something is split into three Agile teams. And do they each have a product owner or how does the prioritization of marketing work in your teams?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah, it's a good question. So we do have individual product owners for those three product teams. And what's fascinating is the product owners then also have to meet very regularly to make sure that the priorities stay aligned. Because like many marketing teams, we don't have specialized skill sets on each of those teams. So for the group of 23, we only have one copywriter. For the group of 23, we have two graphic designers. So it's not like each team has its own graphic designer or its own copywriter.

Sean Blake:

Yes.

Melissa Reeve:

So that means the three POs have to get together and decide the priorities, the joint priorities for the copywriter, the joint priorities for those graphic designers. And I think it's working. I mean, it's not without its hiccups, but I think it's the role of the PO and it's an important role.

Sean Blake:

So how do you avoid the temptation to come to these teams and say, "Drop what you're doing, there's something new that we all need to work on?" Do you find that challenging as an executive yourself to really let the teams be autonomous and self-organizing?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah, I think the biggest favor we've done to the teams is really, I don't want to say banned walk-up work, but the first thing we did is we defined it. And we said, "Walk-up work is anything that's going to take you more than two hours and that was not part of iteration planning." And iteration is only two weeks. And so, in theory, you've done it within the past 10 days. So if it wasn't part of that and you can't push it off to the next iteration planning, and there's a sense of urgency, then it's walk-up work.

Melissa Reeve:

And we've got the teams to a point where they are in the habit of then calling in the PO and saying, "Hey, would you mind going talking to so and so, and getting this defined and helping me understand where this fits in the priority order." And really that was the biggest hurdle because as marketers, I think a lot of us want to say yes if somebody approaches us with work. But what's happened is people have, myself included, stopped approaching the copywriters, stopped approaching the graphic designer with work. I just know, go to the PO.

Sean Blake:

That's good. So it's an extra line of defense for the team so they can continue to focus on their priorities and what they were already working on without being distracted by these new ideas and new priorities.

Melissa Reeve:

Yes. And in fact, I think we, in this last PI reduced walk-up work from 23% down to 11%. So we're not a 100%. And I don't know if we'll ever get to be a 100%, but we're certainly seeing progress in that direction.

Sean Blake:

Oh, that's really good. Really good. And so your marketing teams are working in an Agile way. Do you feel that across the board, not only within your organization, but also just more generally, are you seeing that Agile is being adopted by non-technical teams, so marketing, legal, finance? Are these sort of non-technical teams adopting Agile at a faster rate, or do you feel like it's still going to take some years to get the message out there?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. And I guess my question to you would be, a faster rate than what?

Sean Blake:

Good question. I suppose what I'm asking is, do you feel like this is a trend that non-technical teams are adopting Agile or is it something that really is in its infancy and hasn't really caught on yet, especially amongst Scaled Agile customers or people that you're connected to in the Agile industry?

Melissa Reeve:

I would say yes. Yes, it's a trend. And yes, people are doing it. And yes, it's in its infancy.

Sean Blake:

So, yes?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah. So all of those combined, and I'm not going to kid you, I mean, this is new stuff. In fact, as part of that listening session I mentioned and we were talking about all these different parts of the business. And there was mentioned that the Scaled Agile Framework is the guidance to these teams, to HR, to legal, to marketing could be more robust. And the answer is absolutely. And the reason is because we're still learning ourselves. This is brand new territory that we're cutting our teeth on. My guess is that it'll take us several years, I don't know how many several is, to start learning, figuring out how this looks and really implementing it.

Melissa Reeve:

Now, my hope is that we'll get to a point where Agile is across the organization, that it's been adapted to the different environments. When I've seen it and when I've thought through things like Agile HR, Agile Legal, Agile procurement, the underpinnings seem to be solid. We can even things like the continuous delivery pipeline of DevOps. When I think about marketing and I think about automation. And I think about artificial intelligence, yeah, I can see that in marketing and I can see the need for this to unfold, but will it take us a while to figure out that nuance? Absolutely.

Sean Blake:

Okay. And can you see any other trends more broadly happening in the Agile space? You know, if we're to look forward, say 10 years, a decade into the future, what does the way of working look like? Are we all still remote or how are team's going to approach digital transformations in 10 years time? What's your perspective on the future?

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah, I mean, sometimes to look to the future I like to look to the past. And in this case I might look 10 or 12 years to the past. And 12 years ago, I was getting my very first iPhone. I remember that it was 2007, 2008. And you think about what a seismic shift that was in terms of our behavior and social media and connecting and having this computer in our hand. So I ask myself, what seismic shift lies ahead? And certainly COVID has been an accelerant to some of these shifts. I ask myself, will I be on airplanes as frequently as I was in the past? Or have we all become so accustomed to Zoom meetings that we realized there's power there. And we don't necessarily need to get on an airplane to get the value.

Melissa Reeve:

Now, as it pertains to Agile, I feel like in 10 years we won't be calling it Agile. I feel like it will look something more like a continuous learning organization or responsive organization. Agile refers to a very specific set of practices. And as that new mindset, well, the practices and the principles and the mindset, and as that new mindset takes hold and becomes the norm, then will we be calling it Agile? Or will it just be the way that people are working? My guess is it'll start to be moving toward the latter.

Sean Blake:

Well, let's hope that it becomes the normal, right? I mean that it would be great to have more transparency, more cross functional work, less walk-up work and more business agility across the board, wouldn't it? I think it would be great if that becomes the new normal.

Melissa Reeve:

Yeah, me too. Yeah. And I think, we don't call the way we manage people. We don't say, "Oh, that's Taylorism. Are you going to be practicing Taylorism? It's just the way we've either learned through school or learned from our bosses how to manage people. And that's my hope for Agile, is that we won't be calling it this thing. It's just the way we do things around here.

Sean Blake:

Great. Well, Melissa, I think we'll leave it there. I really enjoyed our conversation, especially as a marketer myself. It's great to hear your insight into the industry. And everything we've discussed today has been really, really eyeopening for me. So thank you so much for sharing that with me and with our audience. And we hope to have you on the podcast again, in the future.

Melissa Reeve:

Sean, it's been such a pleasure and I'd be happy to come back anytime.

Sean Blake:

Great. Thanks so much.

Melissa Reeve:

Thank you.