We’re back with an all-new episode of SoundNotes where we discuss the nature of products. What are they? How are they different from services and experiences? And does it really even matter? Watch this week’s spirited conversation to see how we’re thinking about and defining products, and discover how your organization might be spinning its wheels by even having the debate. Want to Listen Instead? LeadingAgile · Product Development: Using Systems Thinking to Achieve Better Business Outcomes Contacting Mary Lloyd If you’d like to contact Mary, you can reach her at: LeadingAgile: www.leadinga ..read more

A big part of becoming a truly product-driven organization is getting better at understanding the needs of your customers, and improving your products to meet their needs. In this video, Mary, Dave, and Lance take on the topic of customer journey mapping and show you how this tool can help you align around the needs of your customer. They’ll explain how this technique can identify the customer experience and put specific actions in place to court correct and wee out any of the negative experiences customers are having with your product. Want to Listen Instead? LeadingAgile · How to Align Yo ..read more

In this third installment of our value stream mapping series, Mary shows Lance and Dave how to apply the technique of value stream mapping to your business architecture and capabilities so that you can make more informed, intentional, data-driven decisions to improve your business. Want to Listen Instead? LeadingAgile · Using Value Stream Maps to Identify Improvement Opportunities Contacting Mary Lloyd If you’d like to contact Mary, you can reach her at: LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/mary-lloyd/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mary-lawson-lloyd/ Email: mary.lloyd@leadingagile.com ..read more

Dave Prior is back again with Lance Kind and Mary Lloyd to talk about value stream mapping. In the last installment of this miniseries, the team gave a high-level introduction into what a value stream map is and why they’re important. On today’s episode of SoundNotes, they discuss how use value stream mapping to demonstrate the economic benefit of reducing waste in the system. Want to Listen Instead? LeadingAgile · Quantifying Waste Reduction Using Value Stream Maps Contacting Mary Lloyd If you’d like to contact Mary, you can reach her at: LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/mary-lloy ..read more

Dave Prior sits down with LeadingAgile consultants Mary Lloyd and Lance Kind to discuss value stream mapping. What is it?  Why use it at all? And when should you use this technique? Together, they answer these questions, dig into an example of value stream mapping, and explore some use cases for the technique. Want to Listen Instead? LeadingAgile · An Introduction to Value Stream Mapping Contacting Mary Lloyd If you’d like to contact Mary, you can reach her at: LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/mary-lloyd/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mary-lawson-lloyd/ Email: mary.lloyd@leadi ..read more

In this episode of SoundNotes, Dave sits down with Dennis Stevens to discuss cloud transformation and why you might want to step back, take a deep breath, and come up with a more strategic and planful approach to moving to the cloud. Over the course of the conversation, they dig into some of the anti-patterns Dennis sees in the market that cause cloud transformations to fail, and they explore the benefits of having a strong cloud readiness plan and how you can begin to ensure that your plan is integrated with your business strategy. Video Mentions Dennis’ Blog: Navigating the Challenges of C ..read more

In the face of change, many people inside large organizations are often left with more questions than answers. Do I have the ability to lead my team through this? Do I possess the necessary skills? Will my role become obsolete? Is my job safe? A good change management strategy accounts for these questions and tries to reduce the angst surrounding the change by deploying solid stakeholder management practices. Today, Mike and Dave sit down to discuss how we approach stakeholder management and reveal some of the tactics we deploy during a transformation to create safe, win-win situations for a ..read more

A couple years ago, Mike Cottmeyer did a webinar series on the fundamental building blocks of agility. These days, we’re calling these building blocks the physics of agile. Today, Mike and Dave get together to discuss the four laws that make up the physics of agile and why these laws must be true for agile to work inside large organizations. Want to Listen Instead? LeadingAgile · 4 Truths You Need to Know to Make Agile Work Contacting Mike Cottmeyer If you’d like to contact Mike, you can reach him at: LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/mike-cottmeyer LinkedIn: www.linkedin ..read more

Large organizations that want to stick around and maintain their competitive edge have to stop treating everything in their business like a distinct set of processes. How your technology is architected, your organization is designed, and your teaming strategies, resource management, governance, OKRs, and KPIs are all part of the same system. And you need to start treating them that way. In this podcast, Mike Cottmeyer and Dave Prior talk about the current state of Agile, how a lack of systems thinking is tanking the market, and the role of systems thinking as the transformation industry move ..read more

Carrying work over from one sprint to the next is a thorn in the side of many scrum teams. And often, it’s due to one or two team members who aren’t quite carrying their fair share of the weight. We recently covered this topic in a previous podcast but got some other cool ideas from our listeners that we wanted to discuss. So, in this quick podcast, we explore even more possible solutions for scrum teams dealing with an underperforming team member. Podcast Mentions What Do You Do When One Dev is Slowing You Down?  Want to Listen Instead? LeadingAgile · What Do You Do with Underperformi ..read more