We recently got a chance to converse with Dave Prior, who is a Certified Scrum Master (CST) and an Agile Coach with Leading Agile. In his interview, he shared thoughts on dealing with resistance to chance, changing roles for team members and prioritisation by business impact.
We have enjoyed the brief conversation with him, and hope you enjoy too.
Q1. Change is inherently difficult and uncomfortable. How do you deal with resistance to change?
Dave: This is a big question and it depends largely on the type of change you are considering and a number of of other factors. But, I think at the most basic level, it helps if you can learn enough about the resistors to find a way to make the change something that is valuable for them, or at least valuable enough that they are willing to go thru the pain of changing.
Q.2 Fear of transparency is a common management mistake. What is your thought on transparency helping each leader in making more-informed decisions?
Dave: Fear of transparency is not specific to management. It exists for everyone. People love the idea of it, but in practice, when they fall to the vulnerable side of it, they are not such big fans. Over the past few years there has been an increase in focus within the Agile community on creating safety. Without safety, transparency is difficult. But, the more we can increase transparency, the better able we are to make informed decisions, which would, hopefully lead to better business outcomes. Safety within the organisation must start at the top and flow down.
Q3. Suggest three important things to keep in mind while building an Agile Team.
Dave: Here are the three important things to keep in my;
- They will need organisational safety.
- They will need the time to learn to become a team.
- They will need to be given the agency to become self organizing and they will need to have the willingness to commit themselves to continually learning to become a better team.
Q4. What is your view on prioritisation by business impact?
Dave: This could be one way of prioritising. There are many options. I do not have an attachment to one type over another. It all depends on how they are employed. Bottom line, whatever tools are being used to prioritise work, it must be in sync with company strategy and it must be explicitly defined and known throughout the organisation.
Q5. How to apply realistic but practical estimation?
Dave: I’m not sure what you mean by “realistic but practical estimation”. My personal preference is to estimation Product Backlog Items (PBI) using User Story Points, which are a mix of Risk + Complexity + Effort and then those PBI’s would be decomposed down to the Task Level and estimated in Ideal Hours.
Dave Prior is an Agile Consultant for LeadingAgile. He provides training and consulting for individuals, teams and organizations who are transitioning to Agile. Dave has over 20 years of experience managing IT and Technology projects, programs and portfolios and has been working with Agile methodologies since 1999. Dave’s work is focused on establishing a better bridge between Agile and the traditional project management worlds.
Dave is a CST, a PMP and an ACP. He received his MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas. He lives in NYC and works all over.