For Agility's Sake
29 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 7 ratingsAmway is on an agile journey, working to improve how it delivers value to YOU. Hear from the practitioners, leaders and everyone involved in making the transformation a reality.
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Episodes
For Devs: How to See Code Differently
April 05, 2021 19:00 - 41 minutes - 28.4 MBIn this episode Arlo Belshee, Aaron Coville and Marc Denman discuss how small changes in our coding behaviors can lead to incredible results. Arlo believes we can achieve a bug-free world, Aaron agrees with him on some points of that... Listen to hear the debate and more: Imagining a bug free world Why we waste so much time making and dealing with bugs The average developer creates 3 bugs a day (even Senior Devs) What is “The insight loop” (16:36) Teaches you how to see code differently...
Drive Better Results with OKRs
February 09, 2021 08:00 - 36 minutes - 25.3 MBIn this episode, Sameera Moinpour, Sr. Director of Strategy Solutions at Workboard, explains how OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) can help drive better results for your team. OKRs are a key component of Amway's Agile Workflow Model, ensuring teams are clear on what outcomes they want and how they will measure progress against them. Listen to learn: What are OKRs? How to keep teams aligned to common goals Where to integrate OKRs into your current operations cycles Showing up to review cy...
Becoming an Agile Leader - Rituparna Ghosh
December 07, 2020 07:00 - 37 minutes - 25.4 MBRituparna Ghosh, General Manager and head of DevSecOps at Wipro shares her view on Agile Leadership. Ritu will be the first to tell you, she is still on the journey of becoming an Agile and Servant Leader. In this episode we discuss: How leadership styles have changed over the past 15 years - what used to be "nice to have" leader skills are now a "must-have." What it feels like to transition from "command and control" to "servant leadership." The importance of psychological safety in cr...
The Evolution of Agile - Hannes Färberböck
November 23, 2020 08:00 - 24 minutes - 16.9 MBIn this episode Hannes Färberböck shares his rich, 20+ year history of agile and its various methodologies with us. Hannes is the Managing Director of Nagarro's Austrian operations and the had of their Testing Business Unit. He first started his journey by learning and applying Extreme Programming (XP), and then conducting trainings for other teams on XP. Hannes recalls hearing about the first ever XP conference, where many of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto were in attendance (befo...
QA in an Agile World - Chris Mastnak
November 09, 2020 07:00 - 31 minutes - 21.9 MBHear from Chris Mastnak, "Global Practice Lead - Agile Testing" at Nagarro, on what it means for QA/Testing team members to work in an agile environment. According to Chris, life in QA gets easier with agile. He tells a story of major User Acceptance Test events at the end of a large 9-12 month build carrying a significant amount of risk. It's simply too wide of an area to cover with testing after nearly a year of development. Thanks to agile, QA can be much more confident with testing bec...
Being an Agile Leader - Daniel Eder
October 21, 2020 12:00 - 38 minutes - 26.7 MBDaniel Eder, Enterprise Agile Coach from Nagarro, talks about the role of a leader in an agile organization (and more). When he realized that traditional development was broken His first organic agile transformation Role of a Leader People oriented: aka making people awesome Coach and mentor people to make wise decisions Relieving the daily pains the team deals with Provide context and broader perspectives to implications of team decisions Embrace your technical expertise (but leave...
Scaling Agile with Portfolios - Lisa Gordon
August 10, 2020 06:00 - 21 minutes - 14.7 MBAgile Portfolio Manager Lisa Gordon explains the importance of blatant honesty, difficult tradeoff decisions and maintaining relationships across teams. Lisa has been instrumental in establishing Agile at Amway, particularly in our Agile Portfolios. Here are some of the highlights from this episode: What is a Portfolio Manager Making difficult tradeoff decisions while maintaining relationships What a Portfolio Manager needs from a Product Owner Doubling down with a radical focus on what...
Why Agile Fails - Lee Wiesehuegel
June 01, 2020 06:00 - 45 minutes - 31.5 MBCoach Lee tells us "why agile fails" at scale and what needs to be addressed to reduce the chances of it happening to you and your organization. Most of us know that Agile is easy and effective on a single team, but those of us in the business of Agile Transformation are not working with single teams - we're working with large corporations, multiple departments, external service providers and dozens upon dozens of teams. So how do you avoid failure with agile at scale? 3 key elements of ag...
COVID-19 and Agility - Tom Fox
April 28, 2020 18:00 - 34 minutes - 23.9 MBThe world is in a state of significant flux. If there was ever a time when individuals, corporations and society as a whole needed agility, it's now. In this episode Tom Fox, Manager of the Agile Transformation Office at Amway, speaks on the impacts of COVID-19. His words are his own and do not represent the position of Amway as a company, but as you'll hear, they speak admirably of the culture at Amway. How does "Work from home" affect the Agile Transformation? How do you coach teams whe...
Agility is a requirement to survive and thrive - Tina Abdoo
April 13, 2020 05:00 - 22 minutes - 15.5 MBTina Abdoo, VP at Amway shares how agile is a way to thrive in an ever-changing marketplace. Why it matters to a leader Your team is happier! Your team is more stable, predictable and autonomous, so you can have higher confidence in the things you commit to. Challenges you can expect during transformation You will experience ups, downs, forward momentum, back sliding and forward progress again. Persevere. The myth that we don't need KPI's and metrics anymore - we do, they're just dif...
Agile isn’t easy; it’s worth it - Gaye Garvelink
March 30, 2020 05:00 - 31 minutes - 21.6 MBSys. Analyst Gaye Garvelink recounts her experience with agile and how it hasn't been easy, but more than worth it. My favorite quote from this show was "We were working really hard, but we loved every minute of it." In this episode we discuss: How agile creates an environment that allows teams to flourish while bringing out the best in each individual. Agile before Agile was "cool" Lean / Continuous improvement / Toyota Production System Agile makes learning new things feel safer Wor...
Making Progress Over Making Perfect - Gayle Evans
March 16, 2020 05:00 - 34 minutes - 23.8 MBGayle Evans, Digital Experience Delivery Mgr at Amway, explains how an agile transformation is really a transformation of individuals. It does not require us to know everything up front, but it does require that we continue to make progress. Individual Transformation Servant Leadership Agility is the only way to thrive today Managing an agile team Remove hurdles and support your team Get out of your team's way - trust them and let them do the work Swooping in to save the team means th...
Agile Explained in Simple Terms - Luke Nieuwenhuis
March 02, 2020 06:00 - 31 minutes - 21.9 MBLuke Nieuwenhuis, VP of ABO Incentives at Amway explains how Agile is a way of getting work done. We often overcomplicate it, but it's really about how we get things done as an organization. WHY IT MATTERS Our ability to move more quickly from one thing to another (markets, projects, strategies, etc.) is paramount to our ability to keep serving our customers. On the ground floor, our teams can be very flexible. They often know that what we're working on might not be the most important th...
Product Management in a Complex World - Scott Sehlhorst
February 17, 2020 06:00 - 46 minutes - 32.3 MBProduct Management Coach Scott Sehlhorst goes deep into how an Agile Workflow Model and Product Management can enable a company to thrive in an increasingly complex world. Our Agile Workflow Model is a robust decision making system; providing clarity and alignment at each decision point. This is the only way we can manage the complexity AND stay aligned as we execute. Scott explains the difference between a "regular workflow" and an "Agile workflow" and much more: Cross-functional colla...
Building resiliency through safeguarding - Llewellyn Falco
February 03, 2020 06:00 - 35 minutes - 24.4 MBHe's back! Tech Craftsmanship Coach Llewellyn Falco shares stories of his second visit to Amway. Some of the topics he touches on in this episode are: Anti-fragile: a systemic way of implementing things so that when they break, you get stronger. More resilient. If your system is dependent on discipline, it’s broken. Safeguarding: after an issue was resolved, the team reflected on these 3 questions to help them build more resiliency for the future: What allowed us to create this situation...
Experience Design & Empathy - Kate Kronemeyer
January 20, 2020 06:00 - 29 minutes - 20.4 MBExperience Owner Kate Kronemeyer shares her thoughts on agile, empathy and a hyper-focus on the user. "Design is more disciplined than you think." Other topics we touch on: Building empathy. Design is more disciplined than you think. With agile, everyone can help make things better. Satisfying the customer is EXCITING! Agile isn't just a process change. It's a personal transformation. Stay focused on the user - Literally walk a mile in their shoes. Learn more about your user than yo...
Lessons from 15 Years of Transformation - Marty Bradley
January 06, 2020 06:00 - 33 minutes - 23.3 MBMarty Bradley, Sr VP at LeadingAgile, says Agile Transformation is NOT about Agile; it's a way of achieving your companies goals. Here are some of the other topics we discussed. It's not about Agile. It's a way of achieving your goals. Companies have to get better de-risking their investments. Example: Increasing Sky Atmosphere sales with fast feedback loops. 3 elements of agility: teams, backlog, working tested software Teams: a stable cross-functional team has all of the members it n...
Leaders: Agile is NOT the Goal - Brian Hart
December 16, 2019 07:00 - 18 minutes - 12.8 MBBrian Hart, VP of ABO & Customer Solutions shares his thoughts on why agility matters, how leader behaviors MUST change, and a first step you can take toward agility - rapid experimentation. Other topics we touch on: Agile isn't the goal. It's a way to achieve your business goals. You can apply agile principles to the development of ANYTHING. An idea, a strategy, a physical product, a digital product, a service, etc. Leadership behaviors must change: your team can't change without you. ...
Overcoming the Silo Mentality - Francisco Calderon
December 02, 2019 07:00 - 27 minutes - 18.7 MBProduct Owner for Training & Development, Francisco Calderon explains how Agile can tear down the mentality of "us and them". He highlights the importance of cross-team collaboration and a constant focus on improving what we build and how we build it.
Managing Change is Easier w/Agile - Alyssa Rawsky
November 18, 2019 07:00 - 20 minutes - 14.4 MBScrum Master Alyssa Rawsky shares her agile experience and how her first reaction was "I don't want this." Now, she encourages others with "don't be afraid of change!" Alyssa describes how she and her team are using agile practices to improve adaptability and team morale. A number of other topics are also covered: Misconceptions of the Scrum Master role Fail, adjust and adapt Shout out to the Amway Social team Visual Management is a game changer Planning a year ahead with agile (continu...
Refactoring Code You Don't Understand - Llewellyn Falco
November 05, 2019 17:00 - 22 minutes - 15.8 MBDevOps Coach Llewellyn Falco talks about improving code you don't understand, among other technical topics. Llewellyn is known for his unique coaching style, working with teams for 2 weeks at a time and getting into the technical details with them, creating a sense of safety that allows the team to practice new techniques with low risk. Given Llewellyn's area of expertise, this episode is more technical than others. This episode briefly touches on: MOB Programming Testing code w/a compile...
Scrum Masters & Agile Mindset - Nichole Vanderlaan
November 04, 2019 06:00 - 24 minutes - 17 MBNichole Vanderlaan shares her experience as a Scrum Master, her love-hate relationship with Retrospectives and the mindset of responding to change over following a plan.
Agile & Psychological Safety - Kaylee Betzinger
October 28, 2019 05:00 - 20 minutes - 14 MBDelivery coach Kaylee Betzinger shares her recent experience in the world of agile and how it can create a positive culture of psychological safety on teams.
Agile feels like coming home - Erin Huttinga
October 21, 2019 05:00 - 29 minutes - 20.4 MBProduct Management Coach Erin talks about her experience with agile as a developer, a Scrum Master and an Agile Coach over the last decade.
The 7th Day Effect of Agile - Kris Zoerman
October 14, 2019 15:00 - 20 minutes - 14.4 MBHear from Amway's Agile Transformation Office Program Manager, Kris Zoerman, on agile and the 7th day effect. The 7th day effect is a concept for what it feels like to finish a job and feel immediately satisfied because the results are immediately apparent (like mowing the lawn or cleaning a room). It's based on the book of Genesis in the Christian Bible, where God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, admiring the work he completed.
Product Ownership & Empathy - Alissa Dornbos
October 11, 2019 14:00 - 15 minutes - 10.6 MBProduct Owner Alissa Dornbos talks about her experience as a Product Owner and the importance of having empathy for your customers.
Defining DevOps at Amway - Marc Denman
October 11, 2019 13:00 - 28 minutes - 19.4 MBHear from Marc Denman, the Amway Agile Transformation Office DevOps coach about the practice of DevOps and how it's being applied at Amway. What is "DevOps" How we define and apply it at Amway Why it matters
Why Agile at All - Tom Fox
October 11, 2019 00:00 - 24 minutes - 17.1 MBHear from Tom Fox, Manager of the Agile Transformation Office at Amway on why agile is so important to the company, its distributors and employees.
The Agile Workflow Model - Kyle Spitzley
October 01, 2019 14:00 - 13 minutes - 9.56 MBLearn about the Agile Workflow Model being used at Amway and how it can improve your work! In this episode of AgileNEXT podcasts we give an overview of the Agile Workflow Model at Amway. Here are the key points we cover: Why have a model at all What is "the model" How it works