Agile Podcast: Agile Coaches' Corner

Ep. 122

Podcast Ep. 122: The Journey of an Agile Transformation with Quincy Jordan

Episode Description:

This week on the podcast, Dan Neumann is exploring the journey of an agile transformation with Quincy Jordan, a Director in AgileThought’s Innovate Line of Service.

Agile is no longer the new kid on the block. However, when a new organization decides that they want to benefit from adopting an agile practice, they are sometimes not aware that agility is a journey — not something where you install agile and walk away. This sometimes leads them to run into problems early on. In this conversation, Quincy highlights some of these areas and challenges that organizations run into as they go through their agile journey and how to overcome them.

Key Takeaways

  • Why is it important to understand that agile is a journey?
    • When it comes to an agile transformation, it is important to understand that you can’t just install agile and walk away — it’s a journey
    • “What other journey takes a linear path? There is no journey that takes a linear path. … So, really why [do] we think agile will be any different?” — Quincy Jordan
  • How to start your agile transformation journey on the right foot:
    • Lead with: “Why do we want to take this journey to begin with?”, “Why do we want to go down this agile path?”
    • Set out to solve a specific set of problems
    • Identify opportunities you’re looking to create
  • The benefits of business agility in an organization:
    • Business agility will allow organizations to move quicker with the market
    • Those who can learn, an unlearn, and relearn the fastest are going to be the ones to excel the most
    • You can respond to changes in the marketplace and pivot much faster
  • Important notes on cultural debt:
    • Does your current culture allow for a change in culture to take place?
    • When it comes to an agile transformation, a shift in culture cannot come last because everything else is part of it (and if it does come last, you’re building massive cultural debt)
    • Deciding is a big indicator of culture
    • How communication happens can be an indicator of cultural debt
    • The culture should not be one of “burning the midnight oil” or unsustainable heroics — you get more productivity out of healthy, satisfied employees
  • What an organization needs to know as they move through their agile journey:
      • The organization has to become comfortable with being able to move forward with uncertainty (“We’re not going to know everything, every time.” — Quincy Jordan)
      • When you have an organization that is on the path of an agile transformation, they can adapt a lot better to unforeseen things
      • Don’t reward what you don’t want to encourage (i.e. rewarding someone pulling off heroics in a pinch — a single start player won’t outdo even a mediocre team that plays well as a team)
      • A shift in mindset around budgeting, performance reviewers, “human resources,” etc.
      • It’s important for leadership to regard their teams as their fellow teammates in the organization

    Mentioned in this Episode:

Mentioned in this Episode:

Transcript [This transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate in its depiction of the English language or rules of grammar.]

Intro: [00:03] Welcome to Agile Coaches’ Corner by AgileThought. The podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work and pave the path to better outcomes. Now here’s your host coach, and agile expert, Dan Neumann.

Dan Neumann: [00:17] Welcome to this episode of the Agile Coaches’ Corner. I’m your host Dan Neumann. I’m excited today to be joined by Quincy Jordan, Director of our Innovate line of service practice. And thanks for joining Quincy.

Quincy Jordan: [00:29] Hey, thanks for having me, Dan, always happy to be here on the Agile Coaches’ Corner.

Dan Neumann: [00:33] All right. Today’s topic we’re going to jump right into is about the journey of an agile transformation and, uh, maybe you can expand on, on that topic and why it’s important.

Quincy Jordan: [00:45] Sure. So, you know, as many of us know agile is not, you know, it’s not the new kid on the block anymore. Um, it’s not a new thing. Uh, however, there are many organizations when they decide to, they decide they want to benefit from agile, uh, practices and really things they’ve heard about agile. They don’t necessarily know what all those things mean. Uh, and so I like to really share and make sure that people understand that it’s a journey. It’s not, um, it’s not, you know, you don’t just install agile and walk away. Um, but you know, it is a journey, uh, when it comes to an agile transformation and along that journey, you know, just like any other journey, you go walking through the woods, you know, on a nice hike, you’re going to run into some stuff, you know, lions, tigers, and bears on mine, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, those things happen. Um, and so I thought it would be interesting, you know, for us to talk today, maybe about some of those things that, uh, organizations run into and see, see where we go from there.

Dan Neumann: [02:01] No, that’s perfect. Yeah. Agile is at least the agile manifesto as of this year is 20 years old. So definitely not a new kid on the block. And I’ve seen that as well. I think where we go into an organization, they want to do the, they want to do agile or be agile. And sometimes you just get a sense that it’s not very crisp, what exactly they want, or what benefits they hope to achieve. Um, and yeah, you’re right. Speaking of journeys, I was in Jacksonville. I was out for a run and I knew where I was going. And all of a sudden there was a snake in the road. And, um, I didn’t know what kind of snake it was, turns out it was a cotton mouth. Fortunately I did not get close enough to get bit, but, um, you know, you get that with your agile journeys too. You’re going along. You think you’re on a straight path and there’s, there’s something that’ll pop up and you’re like, what? What’s that? And what can we do about it?

Quincy Jordan: [02:57] The path to add, uh, transformation is, is definitely very, um, Jeremy, Jeremy, for, for those who out there listening that might be familiar with the good place, uh, which is a series. And anyway, the Jeremy, Jeremy is that there is not a straight path. It’s, you know, the path is all curved and it loops back around and that’s very much how, uh, agile transformations go. Uh, but I do think it’s very important, uh, to always lead with why do we want to take this journey to begin with? And so why do we want to go down this agile path? Even if you don’t know what it’s all gonna look like, because, you know, as we say, you don’t know exactly what things you’re gonna run into, uh, is very important to say, well, we are embarking on this agile journey because these are the following types of problems that we believe this will help us solve. Uh, and oftentimes, especially these days, that’s more and more organizations going towards, uh, business agility, um, so that they don’t, they not only have a high-performing teams or adaptable teams, but they’re now having an organization that can adapt as well.

Dan Neumann: [04:15] Yeah. So I think you’re, you’re spot on with what are some of the, uh, the problems to address or opportunities to create. So, um, do we quote, just, do we just want teams to get better at Scrum? Do we want to be able to respond to some threat in the marketplace with almost like a, a startup type of approach? Are we looking to shift, um, how the organization does, um, benefits and compensation to better align with team structures versus individuals? And I was curious if you could expand a little bit on, uh, what business agility might look like if an organization was, uh, hoping to, to realize some benefits from that.

Quincy Jordan: [05:02] Sure. And, and if I might, I want to tie that in also to something that you just said, because you mentioned about, um, are we just using, uh, or are we just trying to improve, uh, Scrum teams or something to that effect? Uh, and so part of this agile journey and determining what problem is being solved, um, or what problems are being solved by taking this approach also includes expanding the frameworks that we’re looking at, expanding the methodologies that we’re looking at. Yes, Scrum is definitely one of the, is the most popular, uh, framework within the agile space, but it’s not the only one, you know, it’s not the only way to be agile. And, uh, quite frankly, you can not choose any of those frameworks. Uh, if you’re in line with the agile manifesto, guess what, you’re still being agile. So it can be some homegrown, you know, type things, uh, that works out as well. But when we’re looking at business agility, uh, the name of the game these days is number one, uh, those who can learn unlearn and relearn the fastest, uh, they are going to be the ones to excel the most. And the market is so competitive now in move so quickly that business agility, uh, will allow organizations, companies to move quicker with the market. Can they keep up with the market, you know, well, that depends on the organization, but if they’re employing business agility, they should at least be able to move quicker than what they were able to move before. Now, that’s impacted by a whole host of things, you know, is this a publicly traded company? Is it, um, are they encumbered by regulations in their industry? So is it healthcare? Is it finance? Uh, those things make a big difference with what business agility looks like for that organization. Um, is it aviation or, and, you know, and there’s a whole different set of, um, of requirements and, you know, things there, you know, as a government. So all those things make a difference in what business agility looks like for that organization. Uh, but ultimately it should allow that organization to adapt and move quicker in risk and respond quicker to chain changes in the marketplace. So they should be able to pivot much faster. Now there’s some other things that will affect that as well, when we start looking at culture within the organization. So when we’re saying, okay, well in this agile, uh, transformation journey, well, are we changing our culture? Okay. Again, that depends. Uh, what is your current culture? Does your current culture allow for that? Uh, is your current culture riddle with 20 page KPIs that have to be filled out and check boxes that don’t add value? Uh, or is it KPIs 15 pages that do add value? You know, it depends. So one of the things along the journey that I think oftentimes this overlook is what I call cultural debt and cultural debt is essentially, uh, if we think about tech debt and we say, okay, well, you know, this is it’s stuff that we know we need to do. We’re making a conscious decision to quite frankly, kind of overlook it, put it on the shelf and say, we’ll come back to it later. And all the while, you know, that’s piling up, piling up. And at some point we have to pay that debt. Well, cultural debt works the same way, and that is sometimes overlooked in agile transformations because there are, there are folks out there that think culture comes last and that we should basically get our practices in our habits and all those things down first, but culture can’t come last because it’s all part of it. And if it does come last, you’re mounting in extreme amount of cultural debt that you’re going to have to pay along that journey at some point.

Dan Neumann: [09:21] And even the, kind of the linear description of what comes first and what comes last, going back to the metaphor of being on a journey, you know, um, maybe, uh, an organization starts with, Hey, let’s explore where our culture is now. Lets wander over there and pick up some practices let’s wander back over there and address something that’s that’s in the way, or go around a cultural debt issue. Um, it’s, it’s not just, you know, that arrow shot, um, that I think I hear a lot of, um, folks in the industry try to give the impression that, Oh, it’s just, you know, we’ll, we’ll give you those tips. We’ll give you the waterfall plan for your agility.

Quincy Jordan: [10:03] Yes and no, that is so far from reality. That’s not even funny,

Dan Neumann: [10:10] You know, I just want to make up, if somebody gives you the waterfall plan for your agile journey, run away, like you’re selling, they’re selling you snake oil.

Quincy Jordan: [10:17] Yes. Um, what, what was the, uh, song back in the day? Don’t go chasing waterfalls like it’s, Oh, you know, just, it’s a TLC TLC thing for, for my Southern, uh, Atlanta folks out there. But, uh, but yeah, it’s, it is not a straight path. It definitely winds. And it’s interesting because what other journey takes a linear path? There is no journey that takes a linear path. So I don’t understand really why, uh, we think agile will be any different, you know, our careers don’t take a linear path.

Dan Neumann: [10:57] Well, and I think I’ve, you know, um, things we’ve done before, you know, can, you know, I think of ’em or they call them goats trails, or I’m I grew up in mostly Northern Michigan and you end up with deer and there there’s a trail because they do the same thing. You know, they’re habitual, they do the same thing every day. And, and, and when that’s the environment somebody is operating and that’s cool, you get those worn in paths of policy and process and procedure. And they’re just, there’s a groove it’ll it’ll sink into the ground. Um, and what we’re doing now is we’re saying, Oh, you’re we’re something’s disrupted the agile journey. We’re asking for new mindsets, new behaviors, new activities, or tools or processes and interactions. And, um, that is going to disrupt that linear straight forward, um, way of operating. And I thought it might be helpful to give an example of something for cultural debt. For me, one, I see a lot of times is who decides and how decisions get made. Sometimes that’s so ingrained in a role, you know, somebody with a title decides this, or somebody in the group decides that, and we’re asking for self-managing teams, perhaps we’re asking for more decision authority. So for me, deciding is a big indicator of culture, what maybe comes to mind for you.

Quincy Jordan: [12:19] Uh, so let’s, let’s start with that one and just elaborate on that one, uh, for a second, because that is definitely one that I see a lot, especially with, uh, either tech leads or, you know, someone that is in some type of supervisory type capacity, um, within tech, within a technical team. And it’s not just that person who is accustomed to making decisions. It’s also oftentimes the team that’s accustomed to that person making the decisions as well. And so they may know, uh, you know, what the right decision is, you know, to make, but they’ll just sit and wait and then look for that person to tell them what to do. Uh, and so that is definitely one of those behaviors, you know, that has to be, uh, adjusted, not completely agree as far as where decisions are made. Um, so that’s definitely one, one area. Um, but in addition to that, uh, how communication happens is another area where there may be, you know, cultural debt, you know, as well. So sometimes teams they’re accustomed to, they never communicate with the customer. They never talk with the stakeholders like that is not part of, you know, there’s this nice wall there that prevents that from happening. And people are accustomed to that wall. And it’s interesting to see when that wall starts coming down and the light bulb goes off and the stakeholders, as well as the teams are able to see, Oh, wow, look that used to take us two months to make that kind of decision because of all the layers and back and forth. And we just make that decision in like an hour or 30 minutes, you know, or something like that. But that is also a challenge, you know, as well, because sometimes those stakeholders, they will have a perspective of I don’t want to know all that stuff. I don’t want to know what you’re considering. I don’t want to know what you’re thinking, um, to the team. I just want you to go build my stuff that I said I want. Uh, and by the way, I am as a stakeholder, very accustomed to wanting you to read my mind, even though you never do, but that’s the culture that we have. So that’s another area of cultural debt as well. Uh, and one last area that I’ll mention them in their planning. But one last area that I will mention is, and maybe I’ll combine two things, but there’s also cultural debt that occurs sometimes where we’re accustomed to having, uh, teams that are oversized because quite frankly, sometimes they just don’t want to take the time out to really think through, you know, does this make sense for us to have 25 people on one team? Uh, you know, the lines of communication alone are, uh, disturbing at best and you know, in are not, uh, affective full of inefficiencies. And then the other thing with that is the burning, the midnight oil. Uh, so there are many teams out there and many organizations that the way the culture is is that we do what it takes. We do like no matter how many people we break in the process, no matter how much we burn ourselves out, we just burn the midnight oil and, and get it done. And that’s okay every once in a while, but that should not be the culture. The culture should not be that this is how we operate on a regular basis is not healthy. You get far better productivity out of healthier teams. You have a healthier employees, more satisfied employees. Those things are, are extremely important.

Dan Neumann: [16:25] The cultures that celebrate unsustainable heroics are always a concern, you know, applauding the team that took all weekend to do a deployment you’re teching tilt and go, why would it take a weekend to do a deployment? Like that means, and I’ve been on teams where we have the Thursday night phone calls where, you know, we would start at 10:00 PM, cause the clients were finally out of the system and roll into, you know, sometimes the wee hours of the next morning, this was pre agile thought by the way, where we would roll into the early hours of the next morning. And that just screams fragile process, heavily dependent on specific individuals doing specific tasks. Exactly. Right. And humans don’t do that. Especially when you get a little sleep deprived, it gets ugly. So looking for opportunities to automate and to, um, create a resilient system that you can deploy in the middle of the day when people are in the system and not break things. So lots of culture stuff there.

Quincy Jordan: [17:38] Yeah. And then there are some serious diminishing returns once, uh, once people are, are, are physically fatigued, uh, it, yes can push through and push through, but you’re not going to get the same level of creativity. You’re not going to get the same level of innovation. You’re not going to get the same level of energy. You’re not going to get any of those things. So that aspect of the cultural debt that you have to deal with along the agile journey, you know, it was extremely empowering. Um, you know, as well in one way, the other things, if we could, I wanted to shift a little bit to, uh, you know, what, what does this mean to the organization when we’re looking at an agile journey? And so, uh, one of the things that we have to become comfortable with is along the agile journey is being able to move forward with uncertainty, uh, because we’re not going to know everything every time. And if we even look at that as, okay, we’re on this journey. And in some cases, assuming that the journey is from waterfall to agile, then we’re very accustomed to a false sense of certainty. And I’ll say a false sense because unless you’re, unless you’re doing something that’s been done a thousand times and you’re doing it the exact same way, then you’re not going to be certain in, even if you are certain, how certain was everyone last year at the beginning of the year with so many different projects, because I don’t care what the methodology was beginning of 2020, there was a lot of certainty, three months later, and amount of uncertainty that, that we’ve never dealt with in our lifetimes. Uh, and so when you have an organization and this goes back a little bit to the business agility, but when you have an organization that is on the path of an agile transformation, they can adapt a lot better, uh, to unforeseen things, which is another advantage to taking, you know, an agile approach, another advantage to being on this journey. And so, you know, some of the other things that have to change with that is, okay, well, how are we changing budgeting? And I know there are many companies that over the course of the past here, they have figured out some really creative ways to budget and do things that they had not done before because they quite frankly just didn’t have to. Um, but in this case, you know, we did, you know, whether it was, uh, companies figuring out and, and thinking about, wait, should we really continue paying for all this office space that no one is going into? Oh, and by the way, productivity in some organizations actually went up who would have thought everyone’s working remote people can work better at home. Novel idea. You know, but that ended up proving to be the case in many organizations. Um, so on this agile journey that that level of business agility helps, you know, with those things as well. So what it means to the organization, uh, to be on an agile journey, those are some of those things as, as well as what, what do we do about personnel reviews? How do we handle that? Because if we were in a waterfall environment or let’s say non agile environment before, and we rewarded, as you said earlier, like heroic type behaviors, well, that’s not the behavior that we want to encourage, um, in an agile organization in the reason that we don’t is because you can have star players, but everyone knows there is no single star player that is stronger than an entire team. I don’t care what the sport is. I don’t care what the organization is. I don’t care what kind of team it is. One star player will not outdo even a mediocre team that plays well as a team.

Dan Neumann: [22:00] Yeah, I, I, I have at times had, um, front row seats to having single hero, uh, superstars on a team that are just impossible to work with. And they’re, they’re, they can be detrimental to the team. Now, I’ve also seen some rock stars that play really well and help everybody else around them play well, metaphorically speaking on a, on a team, whether it’s a business team or a technology team, or a mix of both. And so it’s interesting to look at the selection process that companies use for, for team members. And one more, um, thing that ties into both the reviews, as well as the budgeting is kind of habitually. A lot of companies are still doing big annual planning, you know, in September and October, or even earlier, sometimes of one year, they’re creating the next year’s annual budgets. And a lot of times those get locked in very rigidly and they don’t get evaluated in a much more nimble way to do it would be to do a rolling set of quarterly forecast so that you’re doing smaller recasting of future budgets. And as you learn more and more information in quarter one, you’re going to know more in quarter two, you’re going to know more and just like agile teams where you learn as you go, you can adapt that mindset for reviews, for budgets and for other facets of, of business agility.

Quincy Jordan: [23:28] Yeah. And, and I will tell you, so that is part of the infrastructure in, in our society, for sure. Uh, and many others. And that’s a tough one, you know, to deal with. Uh, and the part of the, that it’s tough is if it is a publicly traded company, uh, there’s a different set of expectations, uh, you know, that are there. And if that company, you know, has, has a board of directors that is agile in mindset, then it probably will work out, you know, decently. Um, but if they have a board of directors that is really more command and control or more waterfall in mindset, it’s a tough one. It is a tough one to do those quarterly, uh, quarterly budgeting that way, or let’s say almost more iterative, you know, budgeting that way. Uh, not because it’s tough to actually do it. It’s tough to get people to buy in to how it’s done. Uh, it can be effective and is effective, um, to do things exactly similar to what you said, uh, whether it’s quarterly or, you know, every 60 days or whatever case, but it’s not long annual, uh, plans, and you can still have an annual forecast. There’s nothing wrong with that. What the problem that comes in is when we’re going to hold everyone’s feet to the fire on this annual forecast. But again, if it’s a publicly traded company, it is, it’s a much tougher pill to swallow for, uh, for the shareholders, for the board of directors. Uh, it, it does become a different thing, but it is something achievable.

Dan Neumann: [25:25] And hopefully as people are listening, they didn’t hear me suggesting that we only do quarter to quarter because where organizations are making decisions that impact people’s lives, there are hiring decisions, there are reorganizing decisions. And sometimes that means shutting employees, moving offices. I mean, I was at a place and when the 2008, um, market crash hit things got closed. And, and, um, the forecast that had been set the year before, no longer applied and, um, yeah, it, it, it gets really tough. Um, and you’ve had an example where performance reviews that were set annually, um, maybe a year later, no longer necessarily applied the benchmarks that were set and that can create some, some difficulty as well. Do you wanna elaborate a little bit on that?

Quincy Jordan: [26:17] Sure. So there was a transformation that, uh, that I was leading with a client, uh, some time ago and we started the, we started what we call an AgileIgnite. Um, so we started that in the December timeframe of that year. And, uh, the AgileIgnite went really well, the assessment, the foundational training, and we did the readout and all that stuff. Uh, and so when we did the readout, which we actually did, uh, I think it was like maybe the end of the first week of January, somewhere around in there. They were like, man, this is really great. This is good. Uh, we want some of our other leaders to hear this. So we said, okay. Uh, so then they scheduled it, uh, for like a couple of weeks and then they had to reschedule it again and reschedule it. And so by the time we did it, it was like maybe mid-February. Uh, and so we did the readout that mid February. So we did not actually start the transformation until maybe about mid-March. So we’re moving along. Transformation is going fine. Uh, we’re getting through the summer, we’re now in early fall. Things have been moving really well. Communities of Practices are going, uh, things are going really good. Transformation team is rolling, agile champions in place, all that stuff. Everything’s going really well. Uh, then we hit November and I walked into the building and I could feel the difference in the building. Like I could, if you’ve ever been in a building where an audit is happening, there is a different vibe in that building. Like you can feel it, uh, but I didn’t know what was going on. So it took me, uh, a couple of days in a figured out, you know, after talking to different people. Oh, so the performance reviews for all the managers and directors is next month. And then the performance reviews for all of their direct reports are going to be in January. And so what it, what it turned out was that the objectives that have been set for their performance objectives and for the directors, as well as, um, the direct reports occurred before we started the transformation. So they were now being held to a list, basically a check checklist of items that says, in order for you to have a high appraisal in, you know, get your well-deserved bonus, you got to meet all these check boxes. And so they were literally scrambling for a good 45 days creating documents to meet the checkbox. It was highly inefficient. Uh, however, it was how they were being incentivized. So after that point, it was fortunate that they were able to, uh, align their performance reviews in a way that was now conducive to in this new, agile way that they were working in. But prior to that, you know, that was something that was overlooked, which was originally the reason I was really, really pushing to get started earlier because I knew that kind of thing could happen. Uh, but even for myself, you know, I wasn’t, I didn’t know when their cycles were in terms of their performance reviews and so forth, but, you know, on an agile transformation journey, at some point that’s going to hit and that’s going to come into play. And so it won’t be until you get through that first cycle, if you don’t plan out that first cycle, well, uh, it won’t be until you get through that, that, uh, you will have a conducive structure in place to working in an agile way.

Dan Neumann: [30:25] And that’s why on this journey, one has to metaphorically keep their eyes up and be surveying the landscape because you know, you walk in with the plans to do a, B and C and you look up and you go, wait, what happened? Something weird happened in the environment. Oh, it’s annual review time. And people have checklists from the old scheme and you can’t blame them for doing things that benefit themselves in the process. So totally.

Quincy Jordan: [30:55] Yes, of course, because I mean, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re working and, uh, you know, they’re not being rewarded, so yeah, exactly.

Dan Neumann: [31:06] Thanks for taking time today, we’ve talked about the journey of agile transformation. I started kind of with a, a figurative approach of it’s, it’s a journey that will at times involve some wandering or, or at least not being a straight paved path that people are following down. We then talked about some of the challenges of the existing culture, bringing in some cultural debt and how to be aware of some of those things maybe respond to them. And then most recently we were talking about kind of a shift in mindset, especially as it applies to things like budgets, uh, performance reviews, uh, human resources, those types of activities, if you will. And so I wanted to, um, see what kind of closing thoughts you had as we wind down.

Quincy Jordan: [31:54] Yeah. So, so human resources, that is, that’s an interesting one because people are not resources like there is, there is no clear way to say it.

Dan Neumann: [32:05] Do you like how I teed that one up for you? That that might be the one of the only times they use the term human resources.

Quincy Jordan: [32:10] I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, you know, after all people are people too, right? So, uh, and it does make a difference when not only when you’re referring to people as resources to them, but it makes a difference when the discussion, without them, our resources, it’s less human, it’s less empathy. It’s less. So it’s more empathy is more consideration. Uh, it’s more human when we just simply say, Hey, how many people do we need on that team? Isn’t that easy than saying how many resources, you know, I mean, people are not cogs in a wheel. You know, we’re in, especially in this day in time where, uh, industries are, you know, full of knowledge workers, you know, we push knowledge work. I mean, that’s, that is, you know, where things are today. And so I don’t want to necessarily go on a rant, you know, too much about, uh, the whole, you know, people are people too, but it is important that especially for leadership, that leaders regard their teams as these are my fellow teammates in the organization, you know, maybe I’m, no, I’m not on their specific team, I’m in a leadership capacity, but you’re on the bigger team. You’re part of the bigger team. And when you know that that’s part of the bigger team, they’re not resources, you’re not thinking in terms of moving people around like chess pieces as if, uh, they don’t matter what their careers mattered, you know, how people interact with one another matter. I mean, there’s certain folks that, uh, just as a sports team, you know, I would personality wise. I would probably never try to put those folks together. You know? I mean, sometimes you have to, but sometimes, you know, if you have the choice, Hey, you know, we have five teams, let’s combine the teams this way and it’s not just skill set that we’re looking at. We’re also looking at, you know, personalities, I get alone, you know, together better and work better together. And those kinds of things. But if we just say resources, then we’re only looking at skillset and that’s pretty much it. And you can’t plug and play people like that. It does not, it doesn’t work well in longterm. So I’ll, I’ll back off of my, uh, people are people too for the moment. And, and just say, I’ve had a really good time, uh, having this discussion on the agile transformation journey and always happy to be on the Agile Coaches’ Corner. So I really appreciate the opportunity, Dan.

Dan Neumann: [35:04] Thanks for joining and sharing Quincy look forward to doing it.

Quincy Jordan: [35:07] Absolutely.

Outro: [35:10] This has been the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast brought to you by AgileThought. The views, opinions and information expressed in this podcast are solely those of the hosts and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of AgileThought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes at agilethought.com/podcast.

 

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Speakers

Dan Neumann

Principal Enterprise Coach

Dan Neuman is the Director of the US Transformation and Coaching practice in the Agility guild. He coaches organizations to transform the way they work to achieve their desired business outcomes.

With more than 25 years of experience, Dan Neumann is an experienced Agile Coach with a deep knowledge of Agility at the team and organizational levels. He focuses on achieving business outcomes by shifting both mindset and practices, resulting in a disciplined, yet practical approach to solving problems.

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