Crisp's Blog

What does it take to lead in an Agile environment? You have probably seen inspiring acts of leadership that made a difference. We’d like to hear about it! Today we launch activeagileleadership.com. A platform for leadership insights and practices in Agile environments. Want to know more? Let’s start with Mindset. Leading in an Agile environment

This article is a follow-up to my post on lean documentation that I published some time ago. In summary, lean documentation is characterized by being easy to consume and simple to keep updated.  The purpose of lean documentation is to help you, as the reader, find answers to your questions, not to hold the detailed answers

To understand this article, first read Managing in Mayberry by Don Gray & Dan Starr: https://www.donaldegray.com/managing-in-mayberry-an-examination-of-three-distinct-leadership-styles/ In short, it is about three different styles of leadership, depending on their view of the problem. The situation is that, in heavy traffic, left-turners may cause a queue of cars that leads to a dangerous situation. Officer Barney’s micromanaging leadership

How to successfully drive initiatives, objectives or opportunities that require several squads (or teams) to succeed? How to do this in a way that respects the agile mindset without falling into the command-and-control trap? Today, this problem is more complex than it seems. We’ve designed and built our squads for self-organization and autonomy in the

Agile outside IT – presentation at Agile Islands 2020

This is the second article in my series on integrating discovery and delivery. In the first article I outlined some common challenges I have seen holding organizations back from benefiting fully from both.

In this article I will introduce some patterns that will help you integrate product discovery and product delivery in a way that works. These patterns have all been field tested in practice.

Most organizations that I meet in my work are struggling to integrate product discovery and agile delivery in a simple practical way that works.

I will illustrate what I mean by giving you examples of a couple of very common issues.

If the acronym VUCA hasn’t made sense so far, then in these pandemic Covid-19 times it surely must. The acronym stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. So when people refer to a VUCA world, they refer to a world where you cannot possibly foresee everything ahead of time (if anything, really). This is true to the whole world – the planet Earth, but also to the world, or context if you like, in which you and your organization operate. 

A couple of years ago, SimCorp made the leap into Agile using SAFe. In this podcast, we get inside stories to Why they started their journey into Agile The results they have gotten so far Why they now feel ready to make a new leap, inspired by a new Agile vision for the future Participants:

A downloadable version of this article can be found here.

One of the strongest management trends right now in companies striving towards Agile is undoubtedly OKRs, “Objectives and Key Results”.

But how do OKRs stack up against the alternatives when it comes to alignment frameworks? And what are the potential undesirable behaviors that come with them?

That is what I intend to explore in this article.

This week Crisp hosted its first Product Discovery meetup. We had the privilege to listen to lightning talks by notable experts from the Stockholm Product community: Martin Christensen shared his holistic Product Discovery framework. Johanna Olander presented SVT Play’s outcome based roadmap. Viktor Cessan shared his thoughts on how Product Discovery can happen naturally if

Last Wednesday, we had the pleasure to host a webinar with Gibson Biddle, former VP Product at Netflix, titled “Hacking Your Product Leader Career”. During the talk Gibson shared stories from his career and tips on how to have a scientific approach to your career progression. Some key take-aways: Keep it simple. Understand your strengths

Max – Tell me briefly what your team is up to @ Discovery?

I’m one member of a devteam which takes care of external API’s. We build services for streaming TV (OTT), for example user management, authentication, user entitlements and playback services.

We started this effort to enable a more flexible way to assign entitlements to users, for example through affiliates (like cable TV companies and mobile phone operators). Before, you had to be a subscriber at Discovery to be able to view any content. Being a direct subscriber is called the DTC model, ”Direct To Consumer”. But a large part of the business in some markets still comes from the so called “TV Everywhere” model where the customers come in via affiliates.

This guide explains the main ingredients necessary for facilitating a team start up and provides you with six example agendas. The guide includes questions to think about when you set up the facilitation and during the meeting.

The components needed for a team start up

1. Purpose or mission -> why does the team exist?
   • What is the business value?
   • What does success look like?
2. Understanding who the team members are:
   • Clearly defined membership list -> who is on the team?
   • Make sure that people get to know each other -> who are my team members as people?
   • What are people’s skill sets? What do they know now, what do they want to get better at?
3. Agree to how to work together
   • What do team members expect from each other
   • What behaviors does the team want to have
   • How to talk to each other?
   • How to split up work?
   • What meetings/sync/feedback is needed

Questions to consider for each area

The story: Our client wanted help creating an Agile vision for the future “post SAFe”. How could we do this given that they work on multiple sites?

Can this be done remotely?  Yes!  During these challenging times, I thought of no better opportunity to share how we approached it.

Are you, as many others looking, for advice and tips for remote working and meetings? You’re not alone. At KRY / LIVI, me and Anders Ivarsson, compiled a list of tips and advice on how to make the most of remote collaboration and working from home. We suspect many are looking for similar advice and

If not, you’re in good company. I’ve written a short summary on how to run a productive meeting. It’s not new. It’s not unique. It’s not revolutionary. But sometimes one feels a calling. Thanks Jimmy for helping out with the closure part. Click below to download a printable version.

There has been a lot of talk about ethics in UX circles over the last couple of years. This is a good thing. However, most of it has not been actionable in everyday work. And, to be honest, most ethically problematic products weren’t designed to be unethical. I am quite sure the designers of smart thermostats, easier purchase flows, sharing economy apps and social networks didn’t expect that their work would be used for domestic abuse, unwanted purchases, worker exploitation and skewed world views.  In my experience, UX designers are generally a group of people who believes in the good of their fellow humans which means most of the time they don’t even consider how their designs could be used in unintended ways that might be harmful or dangerous. But maybe we, as a group, should. Maybe we should try to imagine the worst ways our designs could possibly be used as a part of our design process so we can at least try to mitigate the risk of that happening. 

Interview with Stephen Bungay on:
– What is the “Art of action” ?
– What is the differences/similarities to OKR’s?
– What organisational capabilities needs to be there, for alignment frameworks to really work?

Vad är ett Agilt mindset och hur beskriver man det?

Det är en fråga jag fick finna svar på i och med det sista tillfället i Scrum Master programmet Mia Pilebro (agil coach på arbetsförmedlingen) och jag genomförde på Arbetsförmedlingen. Denna artikel beskriver den definition jag landade i, resonemanget bakom samt varför detta är viktigt då man förändrar en organisation mot en Agil kultur och arbetssätt. De definitioner jag hittade när jag sökte svar på frågan kändes inte kompletta, enligt mitt tycke. Efter diskussion med mina kollegor på Crisp, och med Mia, landade jag i en definition som består av ett antal påståenden, hållningar och en intention.

Are you struggling with improving at a fast enough pace? Perhaps you started your Scaled Agile journey by applying SAFe, parts of SAFe, or maybe even LeSS.  What I’ve found is that once companies have started to apply a certain model, which represents one school of thought. they fail (or struggle hard..) to evolve beyond

Did you answer that question by saying: “I’m fine”? Maybe you aren’t fine, and answered that you were happy, sad, or angry? Did you stop to think about what you really mean by that answer? How are you really feeling? Why are you feeling this way and what do you want to do about it?

In his book, “Permission to Feel”, Marc Brackett talks about the importance of Emotional Intelligence and emotional skills. He shows you how you can develop a more varied emotional vocabulary. You learn how to deal with the actual challenges that you face by understanding how you feel. Here are my thoughts on how Brackett’s method will help you develop your emotional skills. By understanding how you feel, you can figure out what you need to do which in turn will influence how you feel, enabling you to create an upward emotional spiral.

Rigid detailed long-term plans, where progress is tracked based on consumed budgets, are in agile organizations quickly becoming a fading nostalgic memory of the past. They are replaced by forecasts and non-static roadmaps. Gather regularly in front of these visualizations and you will enable learning, sharing and trigger important conversations, resolve dependencies and invite to acts of servant leadership. Make your OKRs and Forecasts come alive!

In this blog I want to give examples of visualizations with accompanying recurring ceremonies. The visualization and accompanying ceremony enable sharing of progress and ensure that impediments and dependencies continuously are addressed and mitigated. It also turns the forecast into a conversation (as opposed to a fixed estimate captured in a project plan that is treated as a promise).

The core question the involved teams answer is:

“How confident do you feel that you will accomplish the Key Result before the end of this quarter?”

Mia Pilebro, agil coach på Arbetsförmedlingen, och jag, genomför ett Scrum Master program med deltagare från två av enheterna på arbetsförmedlingens IT-avdelning. Programmet innehåller sex träffar med en tvådagars workshop som inledning, fyra träffar, så kallade Learning Labs, varannan vecka, och till sist en avslutande heldag för gemensam reflektion och sammanfattning av programmet. Under den andra Learning Lab-träffen som vi hade för några veckor sedan jobbade vi kring grupputveckling; hur utvecklas en grupp från det att den bildas initialt tills det att den möjligtvis blivit en högpresterande enhet? Vad är det för mönster som visas i olika faser av gruppens utveckling, dvs vad är det för beteenden vi generellt kan uppmärksamma och hur kan man beskriva vad som tar gruppens fokus och energi? Dessutom tittade vi på hur ledarens agerande behöver förändras utifrån där gruppen befinner sig i sin utvecklingsresa. 

Mia och jag organiserar träffarna med korta teorigenomgångar blandat med gruppövningar för att skapa en bra miljö för lärande och utveckling. Vid detta tillfälle skapade vi en kortlek och spelplan utifrån Susan Wheelans forskning kring grupputveckling, hennes modell ”Integration Model of Group Development” (IMGD), som beskriver fem faser en grupp kan utvecklas genom:

1. Tillhörighet och trygghet
2. Opposition och konflikt
3. Tillit och Struktur
4. Arbete och produktivitet
5. Avslut

Då vi endast fokuserade på de fyra första faserna under vår träff innehåller spelplanen inte den sista avslutande fasen. 

Workshopen blev väldigt lyckad med både hög energinivå och ett bra lärande kring ämnet. Jag vill därför beskriva hur vi organiserade delen där gruppen fick arbeta kring grupputveckling med hjälp av kortleken vi skapade, och också dela materialet att använda hos era arbetsplatser. Länk till spelkort och spelplan finns längre ner i denna artikel. 

The room was packed. Erin, the Product Manager, had called for an emergency meeting. The product they had just launched wasn’t meeting expectations. Erin stated with a determined voice: “We need to do more Discovery”. The room went quiet.

With confused looks, the team glanced at each other: “What does she really mean?”. “What does she mean by ‘Discovery?’”.

Perhaps this scenario resonates with you. A situation where the term “Discovery” is used, but it’s difficult to discern what it actually entails.

To be fair, the term Product Discovery is ambiguous.

My intention with this article is to try to demystify what Product Discovery is and to give you two Playbooks you can use.

Jag utbildade mig nyligen till handledare för försvarshögskolans koncept Utvecklande Ledarskap (UL); fem mycket inspirerande och lärorika dagar. Förutom ny kunskap har jag dock också med mig upplevelsen kring kraften i grupputveckling när den blir som bäst. Under kursen satt och jobbade vi i kvarteret där vi både hjälpte varandra förstå kursinnehållet men också förberedde och genomförde en del av den normala UL-kursen inför övriga kursdeltagare. Det är fascinerande hur starkt relationerna inom en grupp kan utvecklas, och från det att en tydlig teameffekt kan växa fram, efter så kort tid som några få dagar. 

Det fick mig att fundera på vad det var som hände under kursen som gjorde detta möjligt. Vid reflektionen kring hur utbildningen var strukturerad, den miljö vi befann oss i, handledarnas agerande och vad vi gjorde i kvartetterna, landade jag i att nedanstående fyra aspekter hjälpte oss till att formeras till kraftfullt team under veckan som gick:

• fokus på att bygga en trygg miljö, 
• Vi hade väldigt tajta målsättningar att arbeta mot
• Det fanns möjligheten till frekvent feedback på de resultat vi skapade, samt vi gav varandra löpande feedback på varandras prestationer
• och vi var en liten och komplett gruppering som skulle lösa uppdraget tillsammans självständigt.

Facilitating a workshop or class? Need to come up with working agreements? Are people still shy and quiet and is the tempo still low? Here’s an easy method to get a medium sized group, about 20 people, to come up with and agree to a set of working agreements, while energizing the room and getting people talking to each other.

Anti-Agile är en av mina favoritövningar att facilitera vid uppdrag hos kund. Använder man denna övningen internt inom en organisation så synliggör man ofta många dysfunktioner som finns inom organisationen; kulturellt, strukturellt och hur man arbetar. Övningen fungerar också väldigt bra som en murbräcka i att bryta tron att allt fungerar så bra som det är, och föreställningen att vi är så agila som vi möjligen kan bli. Det senare är många gånger en utmaning då en stark föreställning om sin egna förträfflighet är ett stort hinder att ta sig över som coach för att få kunder att öppna upp sig för coaching och vägledning i sin arbetssituation. 

Interview with Doug Kirkpatrick, startup team member of Morning Star and co-founder of the Morning Star Self-Management Institute. Famous for being built on their principles of self-management, which has led to that Morning Star is today the largest tomato processing in the world. Today Doug has left Morning Star to spread his experience as a speaker, author, and consultant.

In his book, Beyond Empowerment, Doug tells the story of how Morning Star became an example of true empowerment.  He tells us how they went beyond traditional ways of delegating (empowering) and creating a self-managed and truly empowered company. 

I found Morning Star to be an intriguing and fascinating story! I have been following the company for quite a while and recently had the fortune to meet with Doug. During one of our discussions, he shared the fascinating story and his experience as one of Morning Star’s original colleagues.

To learn how you can operate a large successful company in a very agile way based on self-management and a few simple but powerful organizational principles, then continue reading.

Here is an attempt to establish a definition of Output, Outcome and Impacts! It is based on my interpretation of the work of Jeff Patton, Marty Cagan and Clayton Christensen, with some good input from Gojko Adzic, John Seddon and John Cutler.