Exploring the Impact of Agile Coaches with Mike Lyons from Kairise

Promise a fresh take on Agile training in our latest podcast episode. Join us as we engage with Mike Lyons from Kairise, a company that's transforming the traditional Agile training landscape with their self-paced, cost-effective solutions. Discover how you can gain a firm grasp of Agile methodologies without the usual time and financial constraints of a two-day introductory course.

Agile coaches are the unsung heroes of the tech industry, and in our discussion with Mike, we challenge the notion of these coaches as mere overhead costs. Listen to Mike as he passionately argues their significant contribution to top line revenues and bottom-line reduction. Prepare to have your perspective shifted as we also evaluate how intelligent automation might be harnessed to achieve similar outcomes.

In the final part of our discussion, we dissect the roles and responsibilities of an Agile Coach. We underline the importance of delivering superior quality products in less time and the necessity of understanding the business side of things. Learn how to effectively "speak the language of money" with Mike as we also highlight the advantages of asynchronous training and other resources for aspiring Agile coaches. This episode is a goldmine of insights into the world of Agile, its practice, and its impact, so plug in those earphones and tune in now!

About Mike:
🏭 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐖𝐞 𝐝𝐨 & 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐖𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 👩👨
From the front lines, I have seen agile transformations fail because it takes too long to scale foundational training. It’s time to learn in a new way...in the flow of work.

At KaiRise, we help leaders, and their teams get certified in Agile Foundations - Just-in-Time - when it is needed.

And we do it
✅ at your pace,
✅ on your schedule,
✅ and from the comfort of any device

And if you don't like it, we’ll give you your money back.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐠𝐞𝐭?
👉 An industry recognized Agile Certification: The ICAgile Certified Professional (ICP)
👉 And if you’re like most of our clients ~10+ hours / week recovered from your schedule…
…by putting the learnings into practice.

💡𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬
A lean Agile mindset changes your worldview. You begin to see waste in the system everywhere you look. The foundations of Agility are critical and learning the concepts just-in-time makes it stick.

Agility will help you
✅ Make and meet your commitments
✅ Focus your decision-making ability
✅ Adapt quickly to change without significant overhead or friction
✅ See solutions where before there was chaos

Here is a link to our site: https://www.kairise.com/

We would like to offer The Agile Within listeners 25% off our Agile Foundations offering - https://www.kairise.com/courses/agile-foundations

Use this code (2023kairisefans) and we will take 25% off the street price.

About our Sponsor:
Don't miss Scrum Day, scheduled for Sep 14, 2023, in Madison, WI, at the Alliant Energy Center. Morning keynote using Liberating Structures by Keith McCandless followed by break-out rooms including speakers from Stanford University and the authors of "Fixing your Scrum".  Afternoon keynote by Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org. Scrum is a team sport, so bring your team and get your tickets at www.ScrumDay.org. Hosted by Rebel Scrum.  Find the training you've been looking for at www.RebelScrum.site.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

Welcome to the podcast that challenges you from the inside. Welcome, be more and discover the agile within. And now here's your host, greg Miller.

Speaker 2: 0:35

We are thrilled to announce that the Agile Within podcast is a good gold sponsor of Scrum Day. Join us on September 14, 2023 at Align Energy in Madison, wisconsin, for this one day conference. Prepare to be inspired by remarkable speakers, including the author of A Pocket Guide for Scrum, as well as the authors of Fixing your Scrum. Get insights from afternoon keynote Dave West, the CEO of Scrumorg. Learn invaluable strategies from industry leaders on implementing Scrum in human resources, technology teams and beyond. Don't forget to visit us at our booth at Scrum Day. Mark and I will be there and get your tickets at wwwscrumdayorg for this incredible event. Look forward to seeing you. Stop by the booth, mark, and I will say hi. We'll see you then. Mark and Greg.

Speaker 2: 1:26

So Mark was if you listen to our show, you know we do the huddle Mark and our big football fans. Mark was driving me the other day saying hell, you know I'm in Cincinnati, mark's in Columbia, south Carolina, and he went to Clemson. So the Bengals have a player called T Higgins. He also went to Clemson and they have Joe Burrow and they have Jamar Chase. And Mark sent me a thing over LinkedIn that said the Bengals said pretty much admitted they can't afford to sign all three players and that he would like to have T Higgins back at Atlanta, because he's Atlanta, not back, but down to Atlanta to his team, the Atlanta Falcons. So I took a little exception, but for me but I'm sure it is, for Mark Mark would look because the Bengals well, to be fair, the Falcons have gotten what Desmond Ritter went to UC college and they have. They signed our top safety, jesse Bates, which we knew we were going to be.

Speaker 2: 2:30

B John Robinson from Texas is the big splash. And you got B John Robinson. You're running, so you guys are loading up down there. You're going to be a little difficult, yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:39

Has it translated to on the field just yet, so I can't get every chance I can to rib you a little bit. Since the Bengals are, would you say, they're the class of the AFC, they're at the top of the class, they, I would say they're still not getting their, their cred, dude, they're still not there.

Speaker 2: 2:55

It's still. It's still Patrick by Holmes. And then they say Josh Allen, even though we beat him last year in the playoffs, the bills I'll trade you. I'm right, you'll trade. I know you'll take Josh Allen, I know, yeah, but why are we not? Why are we still like third? So I think we're going to have to win the Super Bowl to be number two. I don't know.

Speaker 4: 3:16

It's something that could be your buddy.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I hope so, man. We got Orlando Brown from Kansas City, so our left tackle. That was our big splash. So, yeah, yeah, did you watch? By the way, did you watch quarterback yet on Netflix? They have Marcus Mariota on there.

Speaker 3: 3:34

Yeah, I've read countless articles. I don't subscribe to Netflix because I've really tried to limit the number of streaming services that I have because it just gets out of hand really fast. But yeah, yeah, so please tell me, I need to at least get it for a month so I can watch it.

Speaker 2: 3:51

Yeah, you should watch quarterback, so anyway. So our guest today probably doesn't care about this. He's not a sports fan. Where he's at, However, he has Victor Wimbanyana however you say it, Wimbanyana with the Spurs. So he's down in Texas. So he is a partner at a company called Chi-Rise and they offer something very interesting. They do asynchronous training, self-paced training on the IC Agile. Mark and I both took that through the two-day class, but they offer you can go through the IC Agile training at your own pace. His name is Mike Lyons. Mike, thanks for joining the show. Hey, Greg.

Speaker 4: 4:32

Hey Mark, Thanks for having me and thanks for digging into the NFL side of things to start up.

Speaker 2: 4:38

You appreciate that. I know. I know you love to hear that. I know you were. I know Before we recorded you were like I'm not a sports fan at all, so Mark and I are. So yes, I know that's all right.

Speaker 4: 4:49

I appreciate it. There's probably a lot of analogies we can draw that help us in our career and the day job though I'm imagining.

Speaker 2: 4:57

Yeah, absolutely so. Tell us a little bit more about Chi-Rise. I gave a little intro there, but you have a very interesting company there.

Speaker 4: 5:04

Well, thanks. Yeah, we formed this company right when the pandemic started in 2020, and me and two other guys who have been in the Agile arena for decades now and combined and we worked with IC Agile to pilot this idea. This idea that says getting a foundational understanding of Agile ways of working shouldn't be cost and time prohibitive the traditional sort of let's introduce Agile in a two day class. And well, a little pricey I mean $1,200. Sometimes it's like oh boy, for just entry level. Let me talk to you about the Agile manifesto and the principles, and maybe we'll do an exercise where we talk about a skateboard and then let's get up and do the sticky notes on the wall. We won't teach you Kanban, but we'll teach you some storyboarding to show flow of work. It's all the basic stuff, and here's how you find scrumguidesorg and make sure you use the right language, and those are all good things.

Speaker 4: 6:05

We just felt like what about the learner that wants to do that on her own time, doesn't want to take time away from work to do that, doesn't want to give up her weekends either? So we came up with this idea, we pitched it to IC Agile and you know what they said. They said maybe, but we're not going to lower the bar at all. You still have to meet all of our learning objectives, the interactions, the outcomes, and we're like, oh boy, okay, well, let's give it a shot. We've been doing this for six to eight months and we used Agile to build it. We met with them every sprint and we would demo and we'd say we think this is learning objective three or three, dot one and boom. What do you think? And you know what, guys? Oftentimes they said it's not good enough and would turn it away, which is the reality of. I mean, isn't that software development?

Speaker 4: 6:55

That's how it goes by showing it to them every two weeks, boom, boom, boom. We're like we got there. It takes about six months, eight months, and they said, all right, let's pilot this thing. That was early 2021. And then the review started coming in and they're like whoa, this is a new market.

Speaker 4: 7:11

And if you've, if you're no IC Agile, you know that now they have approved a member organizations to create their own self-paced IC Agile certified professional. We're the only ones that have it on the market today. So you can get that entry level credential, that ICP, for we like to say half the price, half the cost. And then the last thing I'll say about this is you know, look, we, we don't think that self-paced is for everybody, not at all. And we don't think that every certification even needs to be self-paced. No, but for foundational kind of. Let me understand, maybe you're changing careers, maybe this is a new interest to you. We think you should be able to do it at your own pace, on your own device, at a cost that's reasonable. And so, yeah, so you can check it out at chyridescom.

Speaker 3: 7:59

I think that's really helpful. Mike, you know let's be real on today's economy, some companies are cutting back on their training budgets, so you may have to self fund these things. So that's great. Things are tight, maybe. Well, don't know that we can give you any time to to dedicate toward training, so you're just going to do that on your own time. Do you really want to? Maybe you do want to just spend a weekend and get it done, but it's easier to. I know for me personally, it's harder for me to to really digest information and just the such a short amount of time when it's broken up across multiple days where you can actually reflect on the information and then come back the next day. So, yeah, I applaud you. I think there's a great space for this. So thank you from the Agile community for providing this to us.

Speaker 4: 8:53

Yeah, you know something interesting there. Mark this idea, that and we joke about this. But you know, when you go to a two-day class it's like well, I hope you took good notes because it's exactly right with our.

Speaker 4: 9:04

Without program, you get unlimited access to the material. Oh, no, thanks for this retrospective. Go watch the three-minute video on retrospectives. By the way, download the template for retrospectives it's right there in the lesson and then run a retro. It's it's like you know. It's how, it's how we learn today my kids. They want to learn how to change a tire, you know. Hopefully I teach them that, but if I forgot to teach them that, they'll just watch a YouTube video and go change the tire. They don't need to know how the tire works and how rack and pinion steering. We don't need all that.

Speaker 4: 9:31

It's needed to take a day. I'm tired. Go watch a three-minute video and get it done. You know, there's something to be said for this YouTube vacation of learning.

Speaker 2: 9:37

Oh my gosh, it's, it's. I'm a big fan. I use YouTube for a lot. I mean, my wife got me on to it. She's like just YouTube it. I was like, yeah, you're right, yeah.

Speaker 4: 9:49

Yeah, I did a.

Speaker 2: 9:51

I had a. Well, I had a lamp that went out. My lamp stopped working like the the, the knob. You turn it on. It didn't work anymore and I thought the lamp was useless. She's like just no, get on YouTube, you can buy one of these things, and I did, and I fixed it in like an hour. It's like, yeah, she's right, so, yeah, so anyway, this kind of leads us into our topic for today. So About kind of around agile coaching, and I know Mike's talking about his, his icy agile, and the whole idea of leading into yeah, you know, you're not a, you're not a coach in two days. You know scrum master in two days. That's right, you do need experience. But we want to talk about Mike, wants to talk about how, how, how necessary are agile coaches? This sounds contradictory. I know we're wanting to get certified and everything, but how necessary are they and Can we do with or without them? Mike, right?

Speaker 4: 10:51

Well, yeah, I think it's a bit of a warning too. It's this idea that says look, your two-day certification, I do think is important. So I'm not, I'm not trying to tear down the CSP or the PSM or even the ICP or you know. Whichever path you're choosing, it's important that you get a basic taxonomy, like we should know the basics. That that seems reasonable and and that doesn't make you an agile coach, like it doesn't even make you a schoolmaster. You gotta get in there, you got to start doing the work, and here's where I think it gets a bit interesting. So, yep, get certified.

Speaker 4: 11:22

By the way, that certification industry, you know, in the industry You're, you're likely to earn more earning potential. The data is out there to support that. Certifications lead to higher earning potential, but they don't make you necessarily scrum master. Experience does well. Again, here's where it's like okay, so once you start delivering, once you start getting on delivery work Whether it's a product or a service, or a book or a lesson plan, and whatever you're doing, however, you're practicing agile ways of working.

Speaker 4: 11:51

It's kind of a trend in the At least I see it anyway a trend in the industry that says, well, let's, let's start calling them coaches. In fact, if you're watching skilled agile framework, you know that in version six they call them scrum master, slash team coach. There's nothing wrong, I noticed that. But the implication of coach has kind of shifted in the industry. Where coach is this? I don't know the right term, so forgive me. It's this sort of life coaching kind of powerful questioning, reading to make sure there's psychological safety, and I for the teams and I. I know the Google report about psychological safety. I'm keen on it, I'm for it. But let me say this coaches, if you're not contributing to the profit of the organization, you're out of position. If you're not bringing in Revenue or decreasing bottom line costs, it won't matter how psychologically safe your teams are.

Speaker 4: 12:51

Yeah, yeah, I know that's it reminds me a bit you guys were talking about. What were you talking about? Soccer, nose kidding. I was a little bit you're talking about. You got me.

Speaker 3: 13:04

You totally, I look, I'm not that naive about sports.

Speaker 2: 13:07

I'm not talking about American football.

Speaker 4: 13:11

Well, how many coaches get to come in and have a losing, year after year after year, before the the Whoever, the owners or whatever, well, who gets fired? Do they fire all the players?

Speaker 2: 13:25

No, they go right for the coach correct coach and GM, usually one of the two, but yeah, usually the coach.

Speaker 4: 13:31

Yeah, this first and so when I, when I hear this like agile coaching Idea that it can be, you know, you just you just need to ask powerful questions and you need to be in the right coaching stance, and it's like, yeah, okay, as long as we understand that that's in the end that's gonna lead to profit for the company. That's, that's got to be our focus. Otherwise you're just an overhead expense and, like an NFL coach, maybe you should go.

Speaker 2: 14:00

But do you think that you and I were talking earlier? Do you think that, okay, if you take out the ad to coach, I mean waterfall they could go back to waterfall, right with the PM? And? And you know that I like I mean, if you, if you're like me, any the PMs that I've been associated with in my career at Pretty much every company. Some of them walk around with the dollars of their, of their projects. They've done like they lead with that, like, oh, I, I'm running a 10 million dollar project or I, you know, I ran a project here than dead and it's still in production. They say that all the time, I hear that constantly. But why don't we do that in the agile community? Because we could be, we could be on, because now that same project is moved to a product, right, and, and we could still be doing the same work, but in the, in the agile manner. And you take out the PMs and we now have agile coaches and Agilists. We could be delivering the same things, but we don't lead with that.

Speaker 4: 15:02

You know you're hitting on a very interesting topic here. When you started sharing that story about the PM that walks around saying I'm on a 10 million dollar project, I'm like well, that's cool. I was like I'm like I'm not sure exactly about that project because I've been a project manager, like I had my P and O, yeah, and I get it and I understand and value delivery metrics and the whole deal is it's all great, it has a place and and it can be even successful with technology projects, it. But but you never see scrum masters Go hey, I'm on a hundred million dollar delivery project. That's both angle across. And why not?

Speaker 4: 15:38

And you wonder, is it because of the term Servant leader? Maybe is it, and I know we don't use servant leader in the new scrum guides, but it's still around. We kind of think about masters of servant leaders, whatever we're caught. I just wonder like why shouldn't we lead that way? Scrum masters, if you're listening, why wouldn't you lead that way? Why wouldn't you be proud of what you're doing for the top line revenue? Bottom line reduction?

Speaker 2: 16:01

That's a good thing. I mean I it just came to me. I'm just like I mean I think we were talking about earlier and I had it in the back of my head. I'm just like wondering, yeah, why don't we say that it's the same? It could be the same work, right? I mean we're going for the same outcome. I mean I work right now in an area maybe, Mark, you can talk about too. I work right now and it's called Intelligent Automation and if you've heard of that, I work in banking and we're creating bots and are the director of the product director in my area who leads the area. He's always talking about numbers and our goal is to save. So we introduce a bot to automate manual, a lot of manual processes.

Speaker 2: 16:51

We're not trying to get rid of anybody's jobs. We're trying to take the people and they can focus on something else all this manual stuff. But we do calculate in what the bot, the value the bot brings to that side of the business is. It's usually in hours saved of a human right and you calculate their salary and you figure out how much that we're saving right. Things like that are cost avoidance. So our goal is to have a million dollars a month and basically pay for us, cost us a million dollars a month to run our area.

Speaker 2: 17:25

There's like four teams now I don't know 50, 60, so many people in my area. So that's his goal and he's always leading with that. So but I don't go around saying when I talk to my manager and other Agilas, I don't say hey, yeah, yeah, I'm saving the company million dollars a month. I don't say I don't talk like that and I mean not that we should, you know, but we should maybe say it a little bit. I'm on the team, I'm a part of the team, I'm helping them run. I mean, right, yeah.

Speaker 4: 17:58

And maybe don't. Like you said, could it just be another talking point in our tool belt of talking points about why Agil ways of working are outperforming sort of legacy or traditional approaches? And guess what? My role is as an Agil delivery lead, or an Agil I don't even like to use the word coach anymore, that's how much I'm turned off by this. But Agil delivery lead, I'm responsible for bringing in a million dollars worth of, in your case, bottom line reduction to the company. Exactly, yeah, I would have it in my tool belt.

Speaker 2: 18:32

That's that's. That's what I mean. I'm not. I'm not creating the bots, of course. I'm not a developer. I never want to be.

Speaker 4: 18:40

But look, greg, everyone on the team could say that it's not like you're saying oh look at me, I did. By the way, no one person did make $1 in bottom, like we're not. You're exactly naive enough to think that that you're the one that did it. Of course not. They're going to know you're on a team of people and you should be encouraging, as a leader of your teams, to tell them to all talk that way too.

Speaker 3: 19:02

Yeah, I think that's an important distinction because that, at least in my experience, that was a lot of the stigma behind your classic project manager, like your PMO group was to be the person that really is the, the driver of the, of the ship, and that would make those type of of claims, and it really created a lot of friction with the, with the team, because they didn't feel like you know, yeah.

Speaker 3: 19:33

I'm just a whipping boy to to row the boat and you know this project manager at the front that's telling us to row. They're the ones getting all the all the glory. So I come from the, from the engineering side of the house. That's where I started my my career. So I'm much more, I guess, empathetic toward the developer side and I like the distinction that you make that that is a tool in our tool belt, not the only tool. You know we don't only carry a hammer around in our tool belt right.

Speaker 4: 20:09

There's a I guess, because I've been on those. I've been on those teams where I've had the hammer put to me. Ouch, stop it. I mean you're being up a great point, mark. There's a balance there.

Speaker 3: 20:21

Yeah, so real quick story. I'll make it super brief because I've told it at least once before. Greg has heard it, but yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:28

I think we're getting some feedback when you talk. I'll get. Mike, when you talk? Yeah, are you hearing it, mike? Mark, I'm at Mark.

Speaker 3: 20:38

Yeah, I don't hear it now, okay, maybe it's Mike.

Speaker 4: 20:42

I didn't hear the feedback, but I'm. As long as we're paused, I'm. I'm watching my Mike little bar and it moves every time you guys talk. So if you're getting feedback, I could have a hot mic here, okay.

Speaker 2: 20:55

Let's see yeah.

Speaker 3: 20:58

Yeah, I don't think.

Speaker 2: 20:58

go ahead and talk, Mark. Yeah, Mike, maybe it's Mike, Maybe it's Mike.

Speaker 3: 21:02

So super, super quick. Yeah, had a project where and this was well, it was a product, but we'll just call it a project that the executives in the company said they wanted this project delivered as of a certain date, asked for the team to go and do an estimate of how long it was going to take, they told them the executive six months. The executive said, hey, that's great, guess what You're going to do it in three months. And they were like Okay, so after three months, team in. You know, I wasn't on this team, but I observed this team because they were on the same floor. Every weekend you would come in the the trash cans were literally overflowing with red bull cans. I'm not exaggerating because they worked, you know, 80, 90 hour weeks and in the three weeks or in the three months.

Speaker 3: 22:00

Excuse me, they did go live, but it was an absolute dumpster fire. Think about. Think about when the Obamacare website came online for the first time.

Speaker 3: 22:11

Oh, yeah, that was like that bad, and it took them another three months to get a stable system. And they were telling that we're moving too fast, we're making taking shortcuts just to make this date. And so if they were just stuck with the original six months, which they told them, they would have had a much more robust product and not had so much egg on their face by by releasing early. So that to say that just gives me a lesson that I always teach to my teams is that you know, faster in chasing a dollar is not always better. Sometimes we do need to do things the right way in order to have a quality product, no matter what you know sales or executives or whoever is pushing us to do to be able to meet some revenue requirements. Yeah, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Speaker 4: 23:07

You're welcome. Well, there's. There's a lesson in there too, for us as agile delivery experts is you know, even on an original let's call it six month, you know program, how much of that can we slice off and deliver in two weeks, and then how much can we deliver in another two weeks, and and so on, such that when the executive comes in and says you only have three months, we can say, well, cool, we got this stuff already for you in production and that's what you get in three months. And it's not a slog of weekends and Red Bull cans, it's a slog of it's just running your sprint and releasing.

Speaker 4: 23:47

You know, when we slice a project into a six month slice, people like me get all kinds of uncomfortable. That's way too big, right? Yeah, I think that there's. There is definitely a leftover, hangover from our waterfall days. I have that myself. But as Agilis, we got to have our help. Our executives understand agile delivery and again, here I just come back to how do you help them understand that? I think it's delivery, I think it's a lot less. Let me ask you how you feel about delivery. It's well, give me two weeks and I'll show you what I can put out in production.

Speaker 2: 24:21

Exactly so, Mike, when you say, when you say Agile Coach, is it the do you consider? That the same as the. Agilist Like I'm an Agile, I'm a Scrum Master, agilist with the team. I don't have the title of coach. Do you think are they the same or do you look at them as different?

Speaker 4: 24:41

It's a good one. I mean, that's kind of where we're headed a little bit. I mentioned safe, renamed it to Scrum Master, slash, Agile Coach, right, and I hear people all the time say, well, at the team level, scrum Masters are just team level coaches. And then I'll be out on like LinkedIn or something and I'll be looking at Agile coaches who are really just, not just who are bringing a different set of skills a coaching, a team, a team, a team skills, a coaching skill set to a technical product delivery space and I just wonder. So, to answer your question more directly, I do mix up Agile Coach with Agilist, but, as I mentioned, I'm struggling internally with my own like what do I even call myself? And I'm leaning more Greg. I'm leaning more on like an Agile delivery expert. Okay, not so much coaching, okay.

Speaker 2: 25:37

I like the term. I think it'd be all wet on this topic too. I have the official title is Agilist where I'm at, and I prefer that over Scrum Master. To be honest with you, I've said this before. I'm sure Scrum won't like that, but only because I view myself as I think I should be able to do more than Scrum.

Speaker 2: 26:01

Agile is more than Scrum. Scrum is obviously the most popular Sure. Well, that's good, but I use Kanban. I have Kanban teams, right, we have some. We use Scrum as a framework, right, and they even say you should be able to use other things with it. So I look at myself as being able. You know XP, lean, whatever. That's what we're going through that right now, where I work with, I'm introducing lean Six Sigma all different times of things that, like you said, it's in your tool belt and as an Agilist. So that's I should start. I should be grounded in the Agile Manifesto, like you mentioned earlier, and the values and the principles of that, and then from there I can choose to if a team wants to use Scrum or whatever. But that's kind of how I like Agilist.

Speaker 3: 26:53

I think the underlying theme of what I'm hearing is Agility is not about being Agile, that's not the end result. That's not the outcome that we're after. Similar to sorry, I've got to use a football analogy. Greg will get this, our listeners won't. But you know, if you say I'm going to run a West Coast offense, it's not about running a certain type of offense, it's about winning games, like you said. So they don't bring in just to implement a certain style of play or what they want to win games. And that's what we should be about in the end. So, yes, you do have to block, yes, you do have to tackle, but if you can't win games, something needs to change and you know, honestly, we need to take a. I feel like we need to take a really close look in the mirror and if we're not getting it done, then it's time for us to go.

Speaker 4: 27:57

Yeah it's a little scary though, Mark. I don't know. I'm not sure I'm ready to do that.

Speaker 3: 28:04

It just got dark and this was something I was pondering.

Speaker 4: 28:08

Yeah, I got real quiet. I've been pondering that and that's the idea that you know, Scrum Masters, just, you know, just be careful as you come into this industry, as you begin to think about, well, I really want to become an agile coach, and I'm like, okay, well, are you willing to sort of, you know, risk it all? Because and there's nothing wrong with risk, Like I enjoy risk, I was great reward with risk. These are okay things, they're good things in fact, and you can't just show up and say you're the agile coach and if you're not seeing significant change improved delivery, reduced bottom line, improved top line if you're not seeing those things, you're not doing your job, You're not willing to accept that. That's your NFL coach. When he enters the arena, he knows that is the responsibility on his shoulders. There's not a question about it. It's not like oh, I wonder if I'm in charge here. No, so if you're going to take the coach mantle, take all the responsibility that comes with it.

Speaker 2: 29:12

Right Now we're getting deep, I think, into kind of tying back to the courses and stuff. I have personally witnessed a lot of scrollmasters fall on their face because they've gotten their two-day class. They're a PSM, they put it in their resume. Like Mike said, they get paid money because of that and they can do well in the interview. They can repeat all the stuff in the interview, right, but they heard anybody can do that. You can get past the interview, I think, nowadays probably pretty easily, especially if you're dealing with managers and HR EBT. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:51

You have managers, HR people that don't know much about you.

Speaker 2: 29:55

You can fool them and you get in there. But to your point and Mark, the idea is not just to get your PSM go in there and just go through the motions. I think a lot of people do that. I think a lot of people go through the motions oh, we're just doing the stand-up and they think that they're providing value, which we need to re-look at it. That we're really. That really isn't the value. That's just the very, very tip of the iceberg. The more value is to show the business so we can deliver a faster, higher quality product in two weeks, two-week increment Nice, that's really, I think, the heart of what we're talking about.

Speaker 3: 30:38

I think of it too, greg and Mike, thinking about my teenagers. They're not teenagers anymore, but when they were teenagers and getting ready to learn to drive, they took the, you know, they had to take a written driving test and they actually had to go on the road and take a actually drive, to take a driving test. After they completed that, were they great drivers. Oh, my goodness, I can't tell you how much sleep I lost thinking about my kids being on the road by themselves, you know, just having those key practice lessons that they had and passing a test. They're not great drivers. It takes experience to get that. So that's what I think of when I think about it.

Speaker 3: 31:23

It's getting a little bit more of a sort of a connection.

Speaker 4: 31:29

I really like that analogy, because you still go get the fundamentals, the driving school or the whatever, and you still like we need to go do that. That's good. There's goodness in there, for sure. And then one of the things I like, greg, you said earlier, I consider myself an Agilist. I really like that term. There's nothing wrong with considering ourselves as scrum masters or I got, that's fine. And the way you would describe this idea that maybe I dabble a little bit in Kanban or maybe I just focus on flow, like whatever it is.

Speaker 4: 32:05

That's now that right there, if I'm an executive at a company, I'm like, okay, well, what do you mean? You're an Agilist. And when you, when you say well, that means I'm going to focus on getting us the highest value delivered as soon as possible. It's going to be high quality. I'm not talking about just pushing junk out just so we can say we're in production. No, it's going to be quality. It's going to be a slice of value that brings value to our users, so that we can immediately get the correct feedback and pivot or persevere, depending on what that says. We're going to push into the market quickly, we're going to see how the market responds and we're going to pull back in areas where we don't need to keep investing.

Speaker 4: 32:42

Now, if you show up as a scrum master and say that to me as an executive, I'm bringing on immediately. I would hire you immediately Because you didn't tell me. Well, you know what? I'm really good at calendaring the standups and coordinating people's schedules, because 8am seems to be the best time that works for everybody. And guess what? I had great success in my last job. They had a 45 minute standup and now it's 15 minutes. No executive could care about that Not if you bring it up, I wouldn't hire you?

Speaker 2: 33:09

No, but the interesting thing is when you interview, I've never interviewed with an executive. Maybe you have Mike and Mark, but I've never been interviewed for a position by an executive. It's always been the manager, maybe some people on the team, maybe the HR person sometimes, but I don't know what it's usually quite. They usually ask you the detailed questions like what do you do? What do you do if a team resists and they don't want to do the stand-up every every day? What do you do? That's the questions and the questions you get at that level. That's good point.

Speaker 2: 33:45

It's true, but you can get through that easily, but the better questions be what you just said how are you gonna help the team? To give me an example of how you've helped the team you know, deliver better value, and which is kind of what it's actually. I'm thinking about my, my own job right now and I think this, this area, man, is really taken to me. I've been in different areas where they kind of they didn't really understand what I, what I do, and Maybe I, maybe I did a bad job in in explaining it, but I think we need to. I think what we're getting out of this conversation is I Think I hear you saying, mike, I might. My kind of takeaway is I Think we do have value. I Think we are needed.

Speaker 2: 34:29

If you, if you equate it to a PM, they think they thought PMs were so needed, right and water, for I think agile coaches, agile Sir Justice, needed over here. We need to do better job, maybe of I guess selling yourself Maybe is the term and talking about, like you said, if, if, if you're an executive and you came in and said exactly what you said about, I can help you Increase this and then get into the details. Don't lead with oh, I can help you, your team, have psychological safety. Yeah, that's great. It's part of delivering it, but it's it's not what he cares about. He cares about yeah, I cannot. Can I get this into the market faster? Can I be better than my competition? Can I have high quality? When can I get? When can I see money from this? I'm gonna get. It's all that.

Speaker 4: 35:13

I think it's interesting. We often will talk about how agile is a mindset. Okay, well, look, part of that mindset has got to be that you are accountable and responsible for delivery of something of value. That should be your mindset, not Not the mechanics of the thing. So we go out of one side of our mouths we say agile is a mindset. Okay, fine, part of that mindset needs to be how do I so?

Speaker 4: 35:37

So when I'm interviewing with the you know, you know Middle manager or wherever I'm at for my initial scrum master job and they say tell us about a time you helped your team Do whatever we, our mindset needs to be all about well, here's how I delivered value. When you answer that question and it doesn't even matter with the question, just make up any question. Whatever you ask me, I'm, my answer is going to be well, here's how I delivered value for the organization by Blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever point you want to take that question, but lead with why we're valuable, why do we bring value to the organization? You should know that, scrum masters, you should know what you do in a while. You bring value.

Speaker 2: 36:17

And kind of to jump off to this and I don't know if, mike, you have any more insight the whole capital one thing, when they let go a bunch of was it a thousand eleven hundred Agilists and stuff at, and I'm only going to assume they didn't see the value in in them there and and they decided to let them go. Do you have any insight or comment on that?

Speaker 4: 36:40

I don't. Yeah, I know a couple people who were let go and but I really don't know the backstory or why or anything. I've read plenty of people who think they do know. Sure, yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:52

I Was just curious because, yeah, they well, one, one thing.

Speaker 4: 36:58

What one thing I think we we can equip our, you know, equip our future agile coaches or whatever we call ourselves like I don't know what the term will be, I don't. I hope I'm not going to cause like just bashing all coaching, because that's not what I mean. But you know, sometimes the the idea of the secret to our success is is by by having a point of view with our teams that that is less about the sort of pedantic tactical lever turning of of Agile and more about just again understanding that value delivery is what matters. And the executives and the owners of the company and the board, they are not interested in any agile language whatsoever. They are not interested in that. They are interested in how do we provide value to the shareholders. So just know that and it's not a bad thing, it's just, it's just to know, just to know that and and work to serve that.

Speaker 2: 38:00

Yeah, totally, I think for me. I don't know about you, mark, I think here in the in the end, here Wrapping up, I think we have learned If you're an agile coach, scrum master, agilist, listening to this, you want to be in, you want to get into the field. But it sounds like, yeah, you know, get your certification. I know my personal experience that I Didn't know the stats that might give them that you do make more money. If that's what you're interested in, I I found that that's gonna get you the interview Certifications they love to see. That I think that's you know. I think you need to have some certifications just to just to Kind of prove your knowledge, kind of like that. But getting a certification in and of itself is not going to make you in and of itself. That's right this field. Just be warned that if you just get a PSM, you probably can get a job.

Speaker 4: 38:56

You're probably gonna fail and it's a, it's a, it's a necessary step in the door. Many organizations it's just sort of you know, it's just required. But yeah, to your point, I mean it. The the best, the best teacher is is experienced. So look so, get your certification, do do it, do it, but get as fast, as cheap as you can. And Then get some practice, get some reps under your belt. Nfl coaches don't become NFL coaches just by you know, straight out of college, right there. That takes time. They have to get on the field, they have to get the experience under the belt. And then again, I think, just to sort of round it out, is just be aware that the heavy responsibility you're bringing to that team.

Speaker 2: 39:41

Yeah, and there are a lot of them. A lot of people always ask I see a lot of it. You know how do I, how I break into the field? Well, like you said, be an assistant. I didn't have the job. I was on a team as it, in a different role, qa, ba and I. I Just watched and observed and learned that way and then I learned how to speak the language and Then, when a position opened, I was able to move into that pretty easily.

Speaker 2: 40:08

But but yeah, I think what we learned here today, mark, is that it's not just going through the motions of doing agile, doing scrum, and we need to kind of Assert us ourselves more, help the team, the business, understand our value. I think what I've learned, I think we do have value. I Think, in the right circumstances, that hopefully the executives understand. But as long as we can speak the language of Bottom line dollar and look at what our pay attention to the numbers in, in in your project, the work you're working on, the features, you're working on the stories you're bringing through, pay attention to the numbers. We're going to decrease call volume by 20%. You know we're going to save Da, da, da, da da.

Speaker 2: 40:56

I think that's the the main thing, that that shows the business that we we're part of this and we're helping, we're hoping to prioritize the work right. We're helping them get the work done in two weeks, you know, get that value out there in two weeks. I think that's even. I found. Even with a high performing team, they still need someone like us. You walk away for a couple weeks going vacation or and sometimes it can, they can have, they can have issues.

Speaker 3: 41:24

So in closing, the three of us were having a conversation about servant leaders and how the 2020 scrum guide replaced that with a true leader. I had that discussion with some people and servant leader. There's two sides to that. You're not just a servant and many times people tip the scales and I'm looking at myself, included will tip the scales too much in the servant direction and not keep it balanced by having a leader perspective as well. It's important to note that we're not just there to bring coffee and donuts to the team, but we're there to lead as well.

Speaker 2: 42:12

That could be another episode, mark. Yeah, we haven't done that yet. There you go, there you go Nice.

Speaker 4: 42:17

Yeah, you had me at donuts.

Speaker 2: 42:22

Yeah, donuts. Yeah, I'm getting hungry too. It's kind of the lunch time here, so all right, we thank Mike.

Speaker 4: 42:32

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be with us. Oh my gosh, so great to spend time with you.

Speaker 2: 42:39

Yeah, thank you, so anybody again. If you're interested and I'm sure you are in getting your IC Agile certification Mark and I both have that. Mike has that. Mike's company, chi-rise, does the asynchronous training. We'll have the link in our show notes. You can reach out to Mike at his website. We'll have it in there to take your self-paced and get your IC Agile Hopefully. I think it's going to be maybe half the price of what Mark and I paid. We went through.

Speaker 3: 43:12

We didn't wait. So yeah, I know yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:17

Anyway, it's a good certification to get. I have it. If you want to get into coaching, go through that with Mike. You can reach out to Mike. It's Mike Lyons, L-Y-O-N-S. I'll have his link in there to his LinkedIn profile, along with his Chi-Rise. Any other way folks can reach out to you Mike. Any other way folks can reach out to you, Mike.

Speaker 4: 43:38

Oh gosh, if you can't find me over those two like yeah, you're hurting, that'll work, that'll work Okay.

Speaker 2: 43:45

Got it. So, as far as we go here at the Agile Within, you can contact me. My email is gregmiller at theagilewithincom. We have our LinkedIn page that Mark set up for us. The Agile Within. We have our personal LinkedIn pages. You can reach out to us and Mark is working on. Should I say it? Mark, I don't know. Mark is working on something. Some other way to contact us.

Speaker 3: 44:07

No, it's too late. You got to go. You got to go, I got to go.

Speaker 2: 44:10

Oh darn it. Mark might be working on a website here, hopefully for us, and I own the domain here, so Mark's a developer more than I'm not a developer. Mark's going to help us with that, so hopefully we'll have that. And don't forget, I've been advertising all around our shows. If you've seen it on LinkedIn, mark and I are going to be at Scrum Day in Wisconsin in September, so, if I know, mike's in San Antonio, that's a long way to go, but we're going to be there, so we're going to have a booth and stop by to see us there. We'd love to say hi to you, see some faces there, and I think that's it. So this has been a great show. So thanks everyone for listening in Great show. So thanks everyone Mark and Greg and Mike Lyons for the Agile Within. We'll see you later.