Easy Agile Podcast Ep.7 Sarah Hajipour, Agile Coach

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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 🎧

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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.

"Thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Jon, he shared some great perspectives on the impact of the Agile manifesto" - Amaar Iftikhar

Amaar Iftikhar, Product Manager at Easy Agile is joined by Jon Kern, Co-author of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development and a senior transformation consultant at Adaptavist.

Amaar and Jon took some time to speak about the Agile Manifesto. Covering everything from the early days, ideation, process, and first reactions, right through to what it means for the world of agile working today.

They touch on the ideal state of an agile team, and what the manifesto means for distributed, hybrid and co-located teams.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Transcript

Amaar Iftikhar:

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. My name is Amaar Iftikhar. I'm a product manager here at Easy Agile. And before we begin, Easy Agile would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast today, the people of the Dharawal speaking country. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. And extend that same respect to all Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and First Nations peoples joining us today.

Today, we have on the podcast Jon Kern, who is the co-author of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development and an Agile consultant. If you're wondering, you're correct. I did mention the Agile Manifesto for Software Development. The Agile Manifesto. So Jon, welcome for being here and thank you for joining us.

Jon Kern:

Oh, my pleasure, Amaar. Thank you.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, very excited to have you on. Let's just get started with the absolute basic. Tell the audience about, what is the Agile manifesto?

Jon Kern:

Well, it's something that if you weren't around, and I know you're young, so you weren't around 21 years ago, I guess now, to maybe understand the landscape of what software development process and tooling and what most of us were facing back then, it might seem like a really obvious set of really simple values. Who could think that there's anything wrong with what we put into the manifesto? But back in the day, there were, what I practiced under as a... I'm an aerospace engineer, so I was in defense department work doing things like fighter simulation, F-14 flat spins and working with a centrifuge and cool stuff like that. And subject to a mill standard specification, which makes sense for probably weapons systems, and aircraft manufacturing, and all sorts of other things. But they had one, lo and behold, for software development. And so there was a very large, what I would call heavy handedness around software development process. We call it heavyweight process. Waterfall was the common term back then, and probably still used today.

And there were plenty of, I would say the marketing juggernaut of the day, IBM and Rational unified process, these large, very much like Safe. Where it's a really large body of work, awesome amount of information in it, but very heavy process even though everything would, say you tailor it, it could be whatever you wanted. I mapped my own lightweight process into REP for example. Sure. But the reality was we were facing kind of the marketplace leader being heavyweight process that was just soul crushing, and from my perspective, wasting taxpayers' money. That was kind of my angle was, well, I'm a taxpayer, I'm not going to just do this stupid process for process sake. That has to have some value, has to be pragmatic. So lo and behold, there were a handful of us, 17 that ended up there, but there are a handful of us that practiced more lightweight methods. So the manifesto was really an opportunity for coming together and discovering some of the, what you might think of as the commonality between many different lightweight practices. There was the XP contingent. I first learned about Scrum there, for example. Arie van Bennekum, a good friend, he taught us about DSDM. I don't even remember what it stands for anymore. It was a European thing.

Alistair and Jim Highsmith, they had, I forget, like crystal methodologies. So there was a fair amount of other processes that did not have the marketing arm that erupted, or didn't have the mill standard. So it was really all about what could we find amongst ourselves that was some sort of common theme about all these lightweight processes. So it was all about discovering that, really.

Amaar Iftikhar:

You all get together, the principles kind of come to fruition, and let's fast forward a little bit. What was the initial reaction to the original manifesto?

Jon Kern:

Yeah, it was even kind of funny that the four values, the four bullets is as simple as it was. The principles came a bit later. I want to say we collaborated over awards wiki, but the original... If you go to Agile uprising, you can see I uploaded some artifacts, because apparently I'm a pack rat. And I had the original documents that Alistair probably printed out, because he was the one... He and Jim lived there near Salt Lake City. So it was like, "Hey, let's come here." And we like to go skiing, so let's do it here. So he arranged the room and everything. And so there's some funny artifacts that you can find. And the way that it actually came about was an initial introduction of each of us about our methods. And really I think a key, we left our egos at the door. I mean I was a younger one. Uncle Bob, some of these, he was at Luminar, I know I have magazines still in the barn that he was either the editor of, or authors of for people who don't remember what magazines are. Small little booklets that came out. So Uncle Bob was like, Ooh, wow, this is pretty cool.

And I wasn't shy because I had a lot of experience with heavyweight methods. So I really wanted to weigh in on... Because I had published my own lightweight method a few years earlier. So I had a lot of opinions on how to avoid the challenges of big heavyweight process. So the culmination as we were going out the door and after we had come up with the four values was I think Ward said, "Sir, want me to put this on the web?" And again, this is 2001 so dot com and the web's still kind of new so to speak. And we're all like, yeah, sure, why not? What the hell, can't hurt. We got something, might as well publish it. I don't think to a person, anybody said, "Oh yeah, this is going to set the world on fire because we're so awesome." And we were going to anoint the world with all of this wonderful wisdom. So I don't think anybody was thinking that that much would happen.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah. So what were you thinking at that time? So how would the principles that you had come up with together, was that maybe just for the team to take away? Everyone who was there? What was the plan at that time?

Jon Kern:

I think it was a common practice. Like I said, there were other groups that would often meet and have little consortiums or little gatherings and then publish something. So I think it was just, oh yeah, that's a normal thing to do is you spent some time together and you wrote things down, you might as well publish it. So I think it wasn't any deeper than that other than Bob, I think Bob might say that he wanted to come up with some kind of a manifesto of sorts or some kind of a document because that's I think what those sort of... I was never at one of those gatherings, but you know, you could see that they did publish things. I have a feeling it was just something as innocent as, well we talked, wrote some things down, might as well share it.

And then the principles, there were a lot of different practices in the room. So some of what I would say the beauty of even the values page is the humility at the top is it's still active voice. We are uncovering not, hey all peasants, we figured it all out. No, we're still uncovering it. And the other thing is by doing it, because I'm still an active coder. And plus we value this more on the left, more than on the right. Some people might say it's a little ambiguous or a little fuzzy, but that's also a sign of humility and that it's not A or B. And it really is fuzzy, and you need to understand your context enough to apply these things. So from a defense department contracting point of view, certainly three of the four bullets were really important to me because I learned... Sure, we did defense department contracting. But it's way more important to develop a rapport with the customer than it is... Because by the time you get to the contract you've already lost, which goes along with developing a rapport with the customer, the individual.

And one of Peter Codes, when we worked with customers and whatnot, one of our mantras was frequent tangible working results, AKA working software. You can draw a lot and you can do use cases for nine months, but if you don't have anything running, it's pretty, I would guess risky that you don't have anything, no working software yet. So it really was I think an opportunity to share the fact that some people thought two weeks and other people thought a month. Even some of the print principles had a pretty good wide ranging flexibility so to speak. That I think is really important to note.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And it makes sense. Did you or anyone else in the room at that time ever imagine what the impact downstream would be of the work that was being done there?

Jon Kern:

Not that I'm aware of. I certainly did not. I remember a couple times in my career walking in and seeing some diagrams when I worked with the company Together Soft, and we'd build some cool stuff and I'd see people having some of the... Oh yeah, there's a diagram I remember making on their wall. That's kind of cool. But nothing near how humbling and sort of satisfying it is. Especially I would say when I'm in India or Columbia or Greece, it almost seems maybe they're more willing to be emotional about it. But people are, it's almost like they were freed by this document. And in some sense this is a really, really tiny saying it with the most humility possible. A little bit like the Declaration of Independence, and the fact that a handful of people... And the constitution of the United States. A handful of people met in a moment of time, never to be repeated again and created something that was dropped on the world so to speak, that unleashed, unleashed a tremendous amount of individual freedom and confidence to do things. And I think in a very small, similar fashion, that's what the manifesto did.

Amaar Iftikhar:

As you mentioned, there was a point in time when the manifesto was developed and that was almost over 20 years ago. So now the way of working, and the world of working has drastically changed. So what are your thoughts on that? Do you see another version coming? Do you think there are certain updates that need to be made? Do you think it's kind of a timeless document? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Jon Kern:

Yeah, that's a good question. I personally think it's timeless and I welcome other people to create different documents. And they have. Alistair has The Heart of Agile, Josh Kerievsky's got Modern Agile.

There's a few variations of a theme and different things to reflect upon, which I think is great. Because I do believe, unlike the US Constitution, which built in a mechanism to amend itself, we didn't need that. And I believe it captured the essence of how humans work together to produce something of value. Mostly software, because that's what we came to practice from, is the software experience. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to replace the word software with product or something like that and still apply much of the values that are there with very, very minor maybe adjustments because frequent tangible working results.

There might have to be models, because you're not going to build a skyscraper and tear it down and say, "Oh, that wasn't quite right," and build it again. But nonetheless, there are variations of how you can show some frequent results. So I think by and large it's timeless. And I would challenge anybody. What's wrong with it? Point out something that's somehow not true 20 years later. And I think that's the genius behind it was we stumbled on... And probably because most of us were object modelers, that's one of the things we're really good at, is distilling the essence of a system into the most critical pieces. That's kind of what modeling is all about. And so I think somehow innately, we got down to the core bits that make up what it is to produce software with people, process and tools. And we wrote it down. That's why I think it's timeless.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, no absolutely. I think that was a really good explanation about why it's timeless. I think one of the principles that comes to mind in a kind of modern hybrid or flexible working arrangement is one of the principles talks about the importance of face to face conversations. And in a world now where a lot of conversations aren't happening physically face to face, they might be happening on Zoom. Do you think that still applies?

Jon Kern:

Yeah, I think what we're finding out with... Remote was literally remote, so to speak, back 20 years ago. I was working with a team of developers in Russia and we had established enough trust and physical... I would travel there every month. So kind of established enough of a team, and enough trust in the communication that we could do ultimately some asynchronous work because different time zones. And me being in the east coast. 7:00 AM in the US was maybe 3:00 PM in Russia if I recall. St. Petersburg. So we were able to overcome the distance, but it's hard to beat real life. And I would often sometimes even spar a little bit with Ron Jeffries that on the one hand you could say the best that you can do is in person. But on the other hand, I could argue a little bit of some of the remoteness makes things... You have to be a little more verbose, possibly a little more precise, but also a little more verbose. A little more relaxed with... You might take a couple of passes to get something just because, I mean there are two time zones passing in the night. But that was based off of some often initial face to face meetings, and then you could go remote and still be successful and highly effective.

So I think it's important that teams don't just say that they can still do everything. And zoom is way better than 20 years ago, admittedly. Zoom gets, at least you can see a face. But nothing replaces the human contact. And I think also for wellbeing, I think human contact is important. So I would still say that the interaction aspect in the manifesto is still best served with a healthy dose of in-person. And that's kind of the key about most things in Agile. It's to me it's about pragmatism, and not just being dogmatic but rather, what might work better for us? And even experimenting with try something a little bit and see how that works. So even how you treat the manifesto, you should treat it in an Agile manner so to speak.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, no absolutely. That's a great point. On that note, as an Agile consultant or the Agile guy, what have you seen are the best practices or what works, what doesn't work for distributed teams?

Jon Kern:

Well I think the things that are most challenging that I've run across big companies and even smaller ones is that... I don't know if it's natural, God forbid if it's natural, but tendencies that I've seen in some companies to set up silos where you're the quality control, you're the UX, you're the front end, you're the back end, makes my headwater explode. Because that's building in a lag and building in communication roadblocks and building in cooperation which is handed offs from silo to silo, versus collaboration. So I've seen more of that. And I get it, you might want to have a specialty, but customer doesn't care. Customer wants something out the door. If I showed up and I'm going to pull a feature off the stack, what do you mean I can only do part of it? I don't get that. And yeah, I know I'm not an expert in everything but we probably have an expert that we can figure out what the pattern is. So I find that sort of trend, I don't know if it's a trend, but I find that's a step backwards in my opinion. And it's better to try to be more cross-functional, collaborative, everybody trying to work to get the feature out the door, not just trying to do your little part.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think knocking on silos is a big part of being agile, or even being digital for that matter. And often the remedies for it too are there at hand, but it's a lot harder to actually be practical with it, to actually implement it in an organization, a living, breathing business where there's real people and there's dynamics to deal with, and there's policies and processes to follow. So I guess as generic as you can be, what is your thought as an Agile consultant to a business that's kind of facing that issue?

Jon Kern:

One of the things that... Adaptive is what my colleague John Turley has really opened my eyes to. I tend to call it the secret sauce, or the missing piece to my practice. And it has to do with individual's mindset and what we call vertical development. So it might sound like weird wishy-washy fluffy stuff, but it's actually super critical. And I've always said people, process, and tools for, I want to say since late nineties probably, I mean a long time. And the first I've been able to realize why sometimes I would have just spectacular super high performing teams and other times it'd be just really, really well performing but not always that spark and sometimes kind of like, eh, that was a little meh. And a lot of it comes down to where people lie on in terms of how they make their meaning and what their motivational orientation is, command and control versus autonomy.

So what we do is we've learned that we can help people first off recognize this exists, and help people with what we call developmental practices. Something that, even the phrase, you probably heard it, like safe experiments. Failure, or trying something and failing. Well if you chop someone's head off for it, guess what? They're just going to probably stay pretty still and only do what they're told, not try to... I have a super high dose of autonomy in me, so I've long lived by the, better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, and always felt as long as I'm trying to do the right thing to succeed and do the best for the company, they probably won't fire me if I make a mistake. But not everybody has that amount of freedom in the way they work. So you have to help establish that as management, and that's a big thing that we work with, with teams.

And then we also start with the class. If you've ever watched office space, and if you haven't you should, but the, what is it that you do here? So there's a great, the consultants Bob and Bob coming in, the efficiency consultants, "So Amaar, what is it that you do here?" But literally that's something, whether we're helping teams build a new product, is okay, what's the purpose? What's the business purpose of this product? What is it that you do here? What do you want to do with this product? What value does it provide? Same thing with anything you're working with as a team. And that's why whether it's software, producing some feature that has an outcome that provides value to the customer, or some product. But the point is if you don't understand that, now it's making, the team is going to have a real hard time being able to make decisions which are helping us move forward.

So if you help everybody understand what it is we're here to do, and then try to get the folks that might reflect all the different silos if you're siloed, but all the different elements. How do we go from an idea to cash, so to speak, or idea to value in the customer's hand? And have a good look at that. Because there are so many things that just sort of... Technical data often creeps into software code bases. And the same thing, we sort of say the organizational debt, the same thing can happen. Your process debt. You can just end up with, all right, we want the development team to go faster, John and company, can you come in and help coach us? We want to go agile. Sure, okay yeah. All right. We roll up our sleeves, we look around and after an initial kind of value stream look, like, wait I'm sorry but there's a little tiny wedge, it's about 15%, that's the development. And then you spent the 85% thinking about it.

Let's pretend we could double the speed of development. Which was initially the... Yeah, we need the developers to code faster or something. That's a classic. And no you don't, you need to stop doing all this bullshit up front that's just crazy ass big waterfall project-y stuff with multiple sign-offs. And matter of fact, one of the sign-offs, oh my gosh it only meets once a week, and then if you have a typo in it, you get rejected. You don't come back for another... Are you insane? You spent eight months deciding to do eight weeks worth of work. Sorry, it's not the eight weeks. So things like that, what I recommend anybody self inspect is try to... If you're worried about your team, how you can do better is just start trying to write down what does your process step look like and what is a typical time frame?

How much time are you putting value into the... Because a lot of times people batch things up in sprints. That's a batch, why are you putting things in a batch? Or they have giant issues. Well that's the big batch. So there's lots of often low hanging fruit. But to your point, it's often encrusted in, this is the way we work and nobody feels the ability to change or even to stop and look to see how are we working. So I think that's where we usually start is let's see how you actually work today. And then while we're doing that you can spill your guts, you can tell us all the things that hurt and that are painful and then we'll try to design a better way that we can move towards, in terms of working more effectively. Because our goal is to help teams be able to develop ways to do more meaningful and joyous work, really. Because it's a lot of fun when it's clicking and when you're on a good team and you're putting smiles on the customers' faces, it's hard to almost stay away from work because it's so much fun. But if it's not that, if it's drudgery and you're just a cog in the machine and stuff takes months to get out the door, it's a job. It's not that much fun.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah. A lot of the points that you mentioned there strongly resonated with me, and the common pain points. It sounds like you've kind of seen it all. And by the way if you haven't seen office space, definitely need to watch it. It's a really good one. You've mentioned now a lot about of the element of the challenges that a distributed team faces. Now I want to flip it over and ask you what does the perfect distributed team look like today that lives and breathes agile values?

Jon Kern:

Yeah. I don't know if you can ever have such a thing, a perfect of any kind of team. So I would say harking back to the types of distributed teams that I've worked with, and this goes back to the late nineties. So I've been doing this for a long, long time. Only really done remote, whether it was with developers in Russia or down in North Carolina, or places like that. And I think that the secret was having a combination of in-person... If you want to go somewhere as a group, there are things you can do to break the ice, to establish some, what you might call team building type activities.

And not just, hey let's go do a high ropes course and be scared out of our wits together. But rather also things that are regarding why are we here, what are we trying to achieve? And let's talk about whether it's the product we're trying to build, and take that as an opportunity to coalesce around something and get enough meat on the bone, enough skeletons of what it might look like. Because there's good ways to start up and have a good foundation. And that's part of what I've been practicing for decades. If you get things set up properly with understanding that just enough requirements, understanding... And I do a lot of domain modeling with UML and things like that, just understanding what the problem domain is that we're trying to solve to achieve the goals we're looking for, have a sense of the architecture that we want. So all those things are collaborative efforts.

And so if you have enough of a starting point where you've worked together, you come in and, let's say you even had to go rent someplace, because nobody lived near office, so you all flew somewhere. I mean that's money well spent in my opinion. Because that starts the foundation. If you've broken bread so to speak, or drank some beers, or coded together and did stuff, and then you go back to your remote offices to take the next steps and then realize when you might need to meet again. So that's really important to understand that the value of establishing those relationships early on so that you can talk bluntly. And I have some good folks that I run a production app for firefighters since like 2006.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, very cool.

Jon Kern:

And that friend that I've worked with, we are so tight that we can... It makes our conversations, we don't have to beat around the bush, we don't have to worry about offending any, we just, boom, cut to the chase. Because we know we're not calling each other's kids ugly. We're just trying to get something done fast.

And building that kind of rapport takes time and effort and working together. And that's what I think a good successful distributed team, you need to come together every so often and build those relationships and know when you might need to come together again if something is a problem. But that I think is a key to success is it shortens the time. Because you may have heard of things like the group forms, if this is performance on the Y axis they form and they're at some performance level, then they need to storm before they get back to normal, and before they start high performing. So it's this form, storm. You get worse when you're storming. And storming means really understanding where we're at. When we argue about, I don't think that should be inheritance, Amaar. And then you're like, "Oh bull crap, it really..."

And again, we're not personal, but we're learning each other's sort of perspectives and we're learning how to have respectful debates and have some arguments, so to speak, to get to the better place. And I've worked in some companies that are afraid to storm, and it feels like you're never high performing.

Everyone's too polite. It's like, come on. And I love when I worked with my Russian colleagues. They didn't give a crap if I was one of the founders. And I'm glad, because I don't want any privilege, I don't want anything like that. No let's duke it out. May the best ideas win. That's where you want to get to. And if you can't get there because you don't have enough of a relationship, and you tend not to say the things that needed to be said because you're being polite, well it's going to take you really long to succeed. And that's a lot of money, and that's a lot of success, and people might leave.

So I think the important thing is if you're remote, that's okay, but sheer remote is a real challenge. And you have to somehow figure out, if you can't get together to learn how to form and storm, and build those bonds face to face, then you need to figure out how to do it over Zoom. Because you need to do it, because if you don't, if you never have words, then trust me, you're still not high performing.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, I kind of feel like being fully remote now is being offered as almost a competitive advantage to candidates in the marketplace now, because it's a fight for talent. But if I'm understanding correctly, what you are saying is that in-person element is so important to truly be high performing and those ideas kind of contradict each other, I feel.

Jon Kern:

Yeah. And again, having been remote since the late nineties, I've been doing this a long time. And commuting to Russia is the longest commute I ever did, for three years. I mean that's a hell of a long flight to commute there over seven times, or whatever the hell it was. Anyway, I used to say that that being remote is not for everyone, because it really isn't. I mean you have to know how to work without anybody around, and work. I mean it has its own challenges. And yeah, it might be a perk, but I think what you need to do is look at potentially what the perks are and figure out too, can I fold them into... It doesn't have to be all or nothing. And I think that can be a easy mistake to make maybe is to, all right cool, we don't have to have office space. That's a lot of savings for the company. Yeah, but maybe that means you need to have some remote workspaces for occasional gatherings, or figure it out.

But yeah, I think even... And certain businesses might work differently. In the beginning of building a product, I want to have heavy collaboration and I want to get to a point where it's almost, I feel like the product goes like this where once you get things rolling and you kind of get up, get some momentum going, now the hardest thing to do is be in front of an agile team, whether they're in-person or remote. Once things are rolling and rocking and kicking and it's like everything's clicking, you can just bang out features left, like boom, boom, boom. Yeah, okay then we probably need to be...

Unless we've got ways that we're pairing or things like that. I will say when we're together, mobbing is easier. I'm sure there's ways to do it remote, but being in a room, I don't know, it's a lot easier than coordinating over Zoom. You just, hey there's this problem, let's all hang out here after standup because we're just going to mob on this. So it doesn't take a whole lot versus anything remote, there's a little extra, okay, we've got to coordinate, and even different times zones, gets even worse. So yeah, don't get carried away with remote being the end all be all. Because I have a feeling there's going to be a... I would wager there will be a backlash.

Amaar Iftikhar:

And I'll take that back coming from the Agile, the person who does this day to day who helps teams become agile, I'll definitely kind of take your word for it. Plus with my experience too, I've seen nothing really beats a good white-boarding session. That is really hard to replicate online. I mean we have these amazing tools, but nothing quite mimics the real life experience of just having a plain whiteboard and a marker in your hand. That communication is so powerful.

Jon Kern:

Great point. You're so, right, because I had just with the one company that I was with for five years, we were doing high level engineered to order pump manufacturing sales type tool for... So it was my favorite world because it blended my fluid dynamics as an aerospace engineer, plus my love for building SaaS products, and building new software and things like that. And even having a young, we would interview at Lehigh University and we'd have some young graduates that would be working with us, and being able to bring them into the fold, and there was a room behind where my treadmill was and we'd go in there, we'd have jam sessions on modeling and building out new features. And man, you're right. Just that visceral three dimensional experience. Yeah, Miro's great. Or any other kind of tool, but yeah, it's not the same. You're absolutely right. That's a great point. You're almost making me pine for the good old days. [inaudible 00:42:04]

Amaar Iftikhar:

I think the good old days very much still exist. I think even now, it's kind of been a refreshing time for me to be with Easy Agile. I've only been here for just under two months now. And there's a strong in-person dynamic. And again, it's optional, where if people are remote or they're hybrid or they need to commute once in a while, it's a very understanding environment. But once you're in the office or you're in person, you kind of feel the effect you were describing, you're motivated to deliver for the end customer. You just want to come back. It's an addictive feeling of, I want to be back in person and I want to collaborate in real time in person.

Jon Kern:

That's beautifully said, because that's... One of the companies that we're beginning to engage with in South Africa, they're at this very crossroad of struggling with, everybody's been remote, but boy, the couple times we were together, got so much done. And you're describing the flame of, the warmth of delivering and let the moths come to the flame. I mean nurture it and then fan the flames of the good and let people opt in and enjoy it. And still sometimes, yeah, I got to say home, I got the kids or the dog, that's okay too. But giving the option I think is where we're going to head. And I believe the companies that are able to build that hybrid culture of accepting both, and neither mandating one nor the other, but building such a high performing team that basically encourages people to opt into the things that make the most sense at that time. And I think that those companies will rule the day, so to speak.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, absolutely. It's been so nice to chat with you John, and I've really enjoyed this. I want to leave the audience off with one piece of advice for distributed agile teams from you. We've talked a lot about the importance of in-person collaboration. We've talked about the principles of the agile manifesto. Now, what would the one piece of advice be when you're thinking of both? When you want the agile manifestos to be something that's living and breathing in distributed agile teams, what one piece of advice can you give businesses today right now who are going through the common struggles? What can you tell them as that last piece of advice?

Jon Kern:

Well, I think kind of a one phrase that I like to use to capture the manifesto is, "Mind the gap." In my sort of play on words, what I mean is the gap in time between taking an action and getting a response. Whether it's what do we do about the office, what do we do about remote, what do we do about this feature, what do we do about this line of code? The gap in time is, it's sort of a metaphor about being humble enough to treat things as a hypothesis. So don't be so damn sure of yourself one way or the other about the office or remote or distributed. But instead, treat things as a hypothesis. Be curious and experiment safely with different ways and see what works. And don't be afraid of change. It's not a life sentence to, you got to run your business or your project or your team one way for the rest of your life. No. Don't tell the boss, but work is subsidized learning. I never understood people who just keep doing the same thing because they weren't given permission. Just try it. So that's what my departing phrase would be regarding making those decisions. Mind the gap and really be humble about making assumptions, and test your hypotheses, and shorten the gap in time between taking actions and seeing a reaction.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Oh, that's awesome. Thank you. I really wish we could let the tape roll and just keep talking about this for a couple more hours, but we'll end it right there on that really good piece of advice that you've left the audience off with. Jon, thank you again for being on the podcast. And we've really, really enjoyed hearing you and learning from your experiences.

Jon Kern:

Oh, my pleasure. Any time. Happy to talk another couple hours, but maybe after some beers.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah.

Jon Kern:

Except it's your morning, my evening. I'm going to have to work on that.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah.

Jon Kern:

My pleasure, Amaar.

"Lieschen's wealth of experience is absolutely incredible! Not only did she provide invaluable advice, but I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation."

In this episode Caitlin Mackie is joined by Lieschen Gargano Sr, Release Train Engineer at Scaled Agile. They delve into the role of the Release Train Engineer, sharing tips and tricks, FLOW activities, lessons learned and how to get started in the role. With SAFe Summit 2023 just around the corner, Lieschen also takes some time to talk about what she’s most excited about for the event and shared some advice for first time attendees.

If Lieschen's expertise and passion have piqued your interest, be sure to explore the Scaled Agile RTE course. It provides comprehensive training, equipping you with the necessary skills and knowledge to excel as an RTE.

Scaled Agile RTE course

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Transcript:

Caitlin Mackie:

Hi there. Welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. I'm Caitlin, your host for today's episode. At Easy Agile we specialize in developing apps for Atlassian Jira that help your team move from simply doing agile to truly being agile. Our apps have gained recognition and trust from over 160,000 users across top companies worldwide. With our products, teams can transform their flat Jira backlogs into something visually meaningful and easy to understand. Whether it's sprint planning, retrospectives, or PI planning, our apps are designed to foster seamless team alignment.

Before we begin the episode, we would like to say an acknowledgement of country. This is part of our ongoing commitment towards reconciliation. Easy Agile would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast today. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that same respect to all Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander and First Nations people joining us today. Let's jump into today's episode. So today I'm joined by Lieschen Gargano, a senior release train engineer at Scaled Agile. Lieschen is a highly experienced professional when it comes to change management, system design and stakeholder engagement, and has a passion for developing teams and connecting strategy to execution. Lieschen welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast.

Lieschen Gargano:

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Caitlin Mackie:

So Lieschen, you are a release train engineer. For our listeners, can you explain a little bit about the role? For anyone that's not familiar, how would you describe a Release Train Engineer?

Lieschen Gargano:

Yeah. I think one of the easiest ways for people to think of a Release Train Engineer is kind of like a coach or scrum master for the art, for the Agile release train. A servant leader facilitating all of those art events, facilitating the processes and process improvements. And really measured in value delivery, and using flow metrics to measure those improvements and support of the arts.

Caitlin Mackie:

So you mentioned flow metrics there. I've heard a lot about this recently and optimizing flow. What are some of those flow activities that a RT is responsible for?

Lieschen Gargano:

I like to look at feature flow and cycle time. So really looking like are we bringing all of our features in progress at once or are we managing our WIP, not just at the team level but at the art level. Are we taking the whole PI to get a feature through the system, or are we able to finish something before we start the next thing? So I look at that a lot and also just are we making and meeting commitments. Those PI objectives that we set, are we in that 80-100% range? A lot of people want full credit, extra credit and to be in the 120, but for us, predictability really means you tried really hard and you stretched, but you also still made and met commitments. So I look at that really closely too.

Caitlin Mackie:

I love that. You mentioned just then quite a lot of different responsibilities that a RTE has. Do you think that there is one in particular that you really need to get right from the start?

Lieschen Gargano:

Oh, as an RTE, I think the biggest thing is building the relationships and intention. As a servant leader, we really are there to help make the art better, to make being on the art enjoyable and productive and flow. So building that trust and those relationships as a servant leader is the first thing. If you get that wrong, no one will help you do the rest.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah-

Lieschen Gargano:

And you need a lot of help. You're not doing anything alone as an RTE.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yes. Yeah, for sure. I can definitely imagine that. Let's go a little bit deeper on that servant leadership that you just mentioned. Can you share your approach and what servant leadership means to you?

Lieschen Gargano:

Servant leadership to me is helping people understand the direction, communicating early and often so that they know where you're going. And then not just saying, "how can I help you get there? What can I do?" But saying, "how can we go together?" A lot of coaching and understanding the problem to solve and connecting it to how it benefits the people. Just like we ask them to connect their work to how it benefits the customer. As the RT, they're my customer. How does what I'm asking you to change benefit you? Not changing is always easier than changing even if we don't like our current state. So why is it worth it?

Caitlin Mackie:

I love that. Yeah, always asking the why and being really clear on it. Yeah, I think that's great. I've done some LinkedIn digging of your profile, as you do, had a little bit of a stalk and noticed that you hosted a webinar recently on tips and tricks and lessons learned as an RTE. Can we start with maybe some tips and tricks? What can you share?

Lieschen Gargano:

The first thing I will say is lean on the Scrum master team, and if you're lucky enough to have an Agile coach or another RTE, lean on that team. Your lean Agile Center of Excellence, those people have the expertise. They're also building the relationships. They're there to help you. Don't try to just prove yourself or go it alone, it's not possible. That team is your team for success. So 100% go to them. They're a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of relationships, and the best support.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, I know it's so important to have that support network around you. You just mentioned the Agile Center of Excellence. Maybe for some of our listeners aren't familiar, could you explain what that is?

Lieschen Gargano:

Yeah, so the Lean Agile Center of Excellence can look a few different ways depending on your organization. At our organization, it is the coach, release managers, RTEs and Scrum masters or team coaches. And some larger organizations than ours might have that hub and spoke model of a centralized change leader. And then RTEs and Scrum masters that are in different arts and around the org. And some even have separate laces in different parts of the organization if it's really big. But really they are that community of practice that holds your lean Agile practices and the standards of those practices and talks to each other and debates and evolves them to make sure that it's consistent throughout the org. That the org is getting consistent coaching, consistent guidance, and they're not being told five different things about how to transform. Because again, change and being lean is so hard. If you add too many voices into that coaching, it gets really overwhelming for folks.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yes, 100%. And an Agile transformation is already overwhelming as it is, so you can imagine that laid on top. I suppose speaking, if we explore a little bit around those on an agile transformation journey, at what point would you say it's important that that lean Agile Center of Excellence is formed?

Lieschen Gargano:

Oh, I think it should be in place pretty quick. I mean, we talk about training your leaders, training your experts and then doing safer teams and launching trains. You need that Center of Excellence there from the start so that they can go out to the rest of the org that they can do all that training and they can be there to support people through title changes, role changes. Launching an art can feel very scary to folks. If you don't have that in place beforehand, you're going to have a lot to reel in after the fact.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, I really like that. It's almost having this really solid foundation and unified voice to sort of go forward and support the rest of the org.

Lieschen Gargano:

And it's so great to have consultants support, to have partners come in and help you and to have the right tools, but they need the help of people inside. They need that lean Agile Center of Excellence of employees inside the company to help you be successful. As an RTE, you need your team. Anybody, any tool, any people trying to do a change, a transformation are going to need that Center of Excellence because all those parts, that's what makes the whole.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So you mentioned as an RTE, a big tip or trick is to rely on that lean Agile Center of Excellence. What do you think has been your biggest lesson learned as an RT?

Lieschen Gargano:

There are a few things that have been particularly difficult for me. One of them is that I don't like to say no and not in that I take on too much or whatever, but more in that if someone has passion for something, I want them to be able to take it on. I want them to be able to move forward with it. And there are times where we really have to say it's too much change. It's too much for this group to manage. In particular, the Scrum Masters and RTEs people come to us for a lot of things and they need that consistency from us, and they need predictability in a change to feel like we know where they're going and if we introduce too many things or if we try to hold too many things at once, it's easy for us to forget about it later or drop something else. So learning when and how to say no, again not necessarily in that capacity way, but just in the width of change, if that makes sense.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, definitely. I think that what you just said there, learning how and when to say no. I think that's not even exclusive to the RTE role as well. I think that's an amazing piece of advice for anyone listening and to share across our audiences, because I know it's definitely something I struggle with as well. So that's my takeaway from this is to, okay, I'm going to constantly imagine like 'no Lieschen told me to when and how to say no', and just focus on that. So yeah, I think that's a great piece of advice. What was your journey like to an RTE? I know we caught up last week and I got a little sneak preview into this, and I know it wasn't straightforward, so if you can share a little bit about that, that would be great.

Lieschen Gargano:

Yeah. I actually started in conflict resolution. I worked in public private reconciliation doing a lot of natural resources facilitation, so hundreds of people, governments, companies, private landowners, residents, trying to bring all those people together to get to consensus or at least to build relationships that allow them to move forward. So really strong foundation and facilitation in particular, and just day-to-day conflict. When we say conflict, we get so worried, 'oh, I don't do conflict', well conflict's everything all the time. It's all the disagreements we need to succeed in life. So that gave me a great foundation when I became a scrum master, and I did that for a few years working with development teams. One of my favorite teams was our infrastructure team, 10 foot pole because no one wanted to touch their work or the 10 foot pole, and I learned so much there and eventually became a coach and started doing more strategic planning and coaching parts of the organization that weren't used to being on arts. Marketing and other groups, which helped me transition to Scaled Agile, where I started working with our CMO and as he grew the marketing team, helping coach that marketing group into an agile way of working, a safe way of working, before actually becoming a product owner, because I loved organizing around value, and I loved those different topics that we were working on internally.

And one of the people I work with at Scale Agile said, "well, help us develop the product then for everybody else". So I did that for a little while, which gave me so much power in that learning how to say no and prioritize and coaching people to decisions is one thing, but as the product owner, I had to practice being where the buck stopped. There are five right decisions, just make one so that people are unblocked, and that prepared me really well for transitioning into RT.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. You have such a wealth of experience there across so many different roles, and you can really see that each of those key roles have taught you something valuable that you can take into this RTE role. So I think that's amazing. It's so cool to see that even though it's not this straightforward linear journey, there's all these parts that there's traits within each that ladder up to helping you succeed as an RT. So I think that's really cool.

Lieschen Gargano:

And I know people are afraid to make some of those lateral moves sometimes, but the skills that you can build might just be that thing that gets you other open doors that you didn't even think about.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely love that. Yeah, just embrace every opportunity for what it may be, what it may not be. You don't know until you give it a shot. So I think, yeah, I love that. I think that's really great advice. So everything we've spoken about in regards to being a Release Train Engineer may have really hit the spot for some of our listeners. How does someone get there? Were there certifications, courses? What's the process that way?

Lieschen Gargano:

Another thing I probably did backwards. I started with a scrum master cert and then actually ended up getting a SPC certification through Scaled Agile when I was a coach. Because I was a coach before I was an RTE, and I learned about so many other parts of the business that way. But then to become an actual RTE, taking the safe RTE course, but then actually there's a community of RTEs... Which we didn't really talk about this, but being an RTE is a lonely thing. I said earlier, if you're lucky to have another RTE, this is a lonely role. You're really kind of on your own. So not just getting that cert, but being part of that community and being able to send people messages and ask them crazy questions was part of my certification process, but also just community building to where I could feel like I had the connections and competence. So yeah, I found all of them similar to holding each of the roles, also getting that certification, just another tool in the tool belt.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, for sure. I don't want to touch on something you said there about an RTE being sometimes quite a lonely role. What do you think makes it lonely?

Lieschen Gargano:

It's a role that a lot of people have strong opinions about what they need and what success looks like based on where they are in the organization. And there are usually few of you, and even if you're in a large organization with many, you're with your art, you're very focused on your section, and so having all of those pulls and expectations and not having anyone who understands what that feels like just makes it kind of lonely. Now that we have two RTEs and a coach at Scaled Agile, it makes a big difference for me because they are right there in it with me and it's very helpful.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. You can see in that scenario why that community of RTEs is like you said, so important to lean on them as well. Yeah.

Lieschen Gargano:

I find even just connecting to RT's outside our organization too. I grabbed beers with one a couple weeks ago. Those little things, even if you can find that person, meet them at a summit, meet them out in the wild, find them on LinkedIn and just say, "Hey, we live in the same area. We have the same role". It can go a long way because it may seem weird to reach out like that, but they probably are looking for that connection too.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thank you so much for sharing. And for any of our listeners, I might pop some links to any certifications and some scout Agile courses. I'll pop that in our episode notes, so feel free to check those out. You mentioned about connecting with other RTs and meeting at summits, which is a really nice segue to the next part of our conversation. Just around the corner is the 2023 Safe Summit and we're heading to Nashville Music City. What can we expect from Safe Summit? What are you looking forward to?

Lieschen Gargano:

Well, what I'm most looking forward to is that I am putting together an RTE breakfast. So all RTEs are welcome, or even if you're a solution train engineer or you do the role of an RTE with a different title. I'm really excited to meet with those folks over breakfast and just chat it out. And my goal with that really is to have people to connect with so that as we go through the rest of the summit, listening to the talks that we have people enroll, that we can check back in with over drinks and stuff on the later days and say, 'oh, what do you think? How might that work?' So that's what I'm most looking forward to.

Caitlin Mackie:

Amazing.

Lieschen Gargano:

But obviously there are going to be some great talks and the product labs are always really fun. We get to play with the product together.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, cool. Tell me a little bit about the product labs, what's involved in that?

Lieschen Gargano:

The product team puts it together and they have computers set up and you can bring your own and they talk through some of the new releases or things they're working on and help you log into it and use it in your context, but also try to get some feedback on how it works or how you might use it in your organization. So it's a nice two-way street. It's sort of, 'I need this, how might I do it?' And then them saying, 'well, why don't you try and let me see how it works and how we should change it based on how you interact with it'. So it's just really fun. It feels really practical because it's so hands on.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, amazing. I love that. I'm definitely going to have to try and come along and suss that out. It sounds really great. Where do you hope or where do you think we'll see a lot of conversations focused at this year's Safe Summit?

Lieschen Gargano:

At Safe Summit I think the conversations will be really focused on just the day-to-day of Safe. We have new topics that come up. We obviously have new ideas that are going to be presented. But every time I go to one of these, it really is the connecting one-on-one to say, here's where I'm stuck, here's what I'm trying to learn. So we'll hear a lot about Flow, we'll hear about Team Topologies, but we'll also hear those 'I'm just getting started and we're stuck, we have change fatigue. We don't know if our arts are set up correctly'. A lot of those classic conversations that are just really impactful and why people come together.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I love that. Creating these spaces for people to bond over shared experiences and problems they're facing or wins they're seeing and sharing them. I think that's where these events are amazing for creating that kind of environment. Lieschen, this is my very first Safe Summit. I haven't been to one before and I'm really excited. What advice would you have for first time attendees, returning attendees, what's the way to get the most out of Safe Summit?

Lieschen Gargano:

If you're attending with other people from your organization, the best thing is to split up so you can cover more ground and then come back together and share. The second advice is find people with a similar role as you, because again, you can do that same thing with those folks and split up and then meet up again and try to talk about it in your context. It's great to do that at the parties too, because we throw great parties, but that's the best because no matter what room you end up in, what talk you end up at, you're going to get a great nugget. But where it really sinks in for me is talking with someone else about what I heard and then thinking about, 'okay what does that mean?', when I go home.

Caitlin Mackie:

Amazing, great advice Lieschen. If anyone listening happens to also be attending Safe Summit and they see Lieschen on the floor or myself, make sure you say hello, and if you've got any questions for Lieschen about the podcast episode, I'm sure she'll be more than happy to answer and engage in a great conversation. And anyone looking to get advice around the RTE role, make sure you find her and have a chat. Lieschen I'm really excited to meet in person. We've done this podcast with yourself in the States, myself in Australia, so I'm excited to connect over in your world. And yeah, really thank you so much for your time. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I know, I sure did.

Lieschen Gargano:

I did. Thank you.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thanks, Lieschen.