I thought to collect some links here for use as source material in writing a short deck for Executives (in Advertising or Marketing) describing Agile. (UPDATE: Note – the deck is not yet written – this is my raw research).
My criteria for quoting from these (or being inspired by these) is that the material has to be value-focused. Why Agile? What’s the benefit? How is it better than what I’m doing now? And must apply outside of software development. Maybe apply directly to marketing.
I think I also need to give very high-level descriptions of Crystal Clear, Kanban and Scrum, possibly XP and possibly Lean. But I want my deck to be very, very short and succinct.
I may update this post over time.
Here is my first list at 8 AM on 3/29:
Agile Scout’s “Agile is NOT a Methodology”
Agile Methodology.com’s “Agile Methodology”
Dr. Alistair Cockburn “Balancing Lightness with Sufficiency”
Dmitri Maex for Ogivly’s DoubleThink “Agile Markerting Part II: Learnings from Product Development”
Decks by Jeff Patton – read the first deck
Dr. Jeff Sutherland on Agile Principles and Values (his site has great stuff too, but this is at Microsoft)
Jason Yip’s article “It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings”
John Paul Titlow for ReadWriteWeb.com “What is Agile Commerce”
Excellent article by Ken Schwaber on driving value for business titled “Major Releases are a Failure”
Lyssa Adkins’ “What is Agile?”
Michael Sahota’s “Agile Fits Better in Some Company Cultures Than Others”
Scrum Alliance’s “The Scrum Framework in 30 Seconds”
Scott Ambler’s “Bureaucracy Isn’t Discipline”
Scott Brinker (Chief Martec) “Ideas for an Agile Marketing Manifesto”
Scrum.org’s Scrum Guide page
Tobias Mayer’s “Simple Scrum” , “Scrum: A New Way of Thinking” and “The Essence of Scrum”
VersionOne’s “What is Agile” (although pretty development-centric)
Suggestions more than welcome.
Updated 3/29 – 3:45 PM – with articles by Schwaber, Sutherland, Cockburn, and Patton. Alphabetized. Hm. The list is getting too long – probably not a good page for executives, but good for us detailed people to find source material.
Work Different 
March 29, 2011 at 6:30 pm |
> …probably not a good page for executives
Perhaps you can pull out the best of each post and write an executive summary, with links to sources.
March 29, 2011 at 9:18 pm |
Thanks – yep – that’s the idea – it’s just the source for a deck… not the deck itself although I think some folks misunderstood. (False advert on my end? :D)
I may quote liberally from your “Simple Scrum” as I like how you describe Scrum in an easy to read way. For the Exec Deck I wonder whether or not I need to describe how Scrum works (roles, ceremonies and so on) as it could be an executive will not want to know that, but will be more interested in “Value.” I may be able to get away with just “Benefits.” I had a deck with lots of “how to do” complete with shots of post-it notes, but the flow felt off.
Recently I was reading something you’d commented about (“Value Stream” but lost which posting that was) so could it be talking about “Value” goes against the grain of “The People’s Scrum?” and against changing how we work fundamentally?
But isn’t it possible that through showing by doing that slowly, slowly we can work differently, change? The thing about command-and-control is it is a LOT of work effort, finally. I spend a lot of money having lots of PMs command-and-control projects.
Plus, where we are in our development seems that right now we hold “Value” as a very high success metric; we still do GNP rather than GNH (Gross National Happiness), so might really need to frame up “Value” to argue for doing Scrum. And I think that there *is* value so this can work out fine.
To do, I am thinking to pull from Jeff Sutherland’s hyper-productivity work as a result if its possible to essentialize from his Microsoft post. The conclusions of benefit and value really come out nicely from his thorough explanation of Scrum.
Re-working the deck now and expect to post it in next couple days.
April 3, 2011 at 8:02 am |
Grat idea, Mary! When you have the deck ready please sing it to the mountains because I will reference it and use it. I’m just about to post 3 short videos on the “What is Agile” page because I’m teaching professional coaches and recruiters about agile now and they need non-software explanations. So, see if those are also useful.
And, stay in conversation with Tobias. He is an original thinker.
April 3, 2011 at 9:39 am |
Great – thanks – I will look forward to your videos. I’ve found long, bullet-point filled PowerPoints get a tad dry. But they’re still necessary so must do! I have tracked off onto “trust” temporarily, as a result of the conversation between Tobias and you and that synching with something in my circumstances, but am coaxing myself back to the task at hand. 🙂
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