i.am.agile

I’ve created a petition to prevent future hot car deaths by asking that child car seat manufacturers include an alert as a standard safety feature.  I need all the help I can get to SIGN and SHARE this petition to create a groundswell of social influence that can not be ignored.  It takes just a moment of your time and could save a life.  Please sign and share the petition here.

If you haven’t already completed the State of Agile in Tampa Bay survey, please do so here.  It takes less than 8 minutes (for real).  The results will be shared at a 2020 Tampa Bay Agile Meetup.

And now for a kind ask … I’ve created a petition to prevent future hot car deaths by asking that child car seat manufacturers include an alert as a standard safety feature.  I need all the help I can get to sign and share this petition to create a groundswell of social influence that can not be ignored.  It takes just a moment of your time and could save a life.  Please sign and share the petition here.

Join me and 300+ agilists from across the state of Florida and beyond for our 6th annual Agile Open Florida on Friday October 25th at Polk State College in Lakeland, FL.   Our theme this year is Livin’ La Vida Agile! Celebrating The Values & Principles.  This is a community celebration of all things agile and the values and principles that make us so. 

Agile Open Florida will be facilitated using Open Space Technology (OST), with the ultimate goal being to connect, learn, and share. Using the Open Space Technology (OST) approach, Agile Open Florida encourages agile practitioners to self-organize around topics that are most important to them. Participants with common issues and interests share their experiences and learn from others. There is no preset agenda or presentations for the event, rather, sessions are created “live” by the participants at the start of the day.  In order to get the most out of this event, reflect on our theme and come prepared with topics that are of interest to you, either to learn more about or to share your experiences.

I look forward to seeing you there.  Let’s party!

For more information and to register, visit http://www.agileopenflorida.com and follow us on Twitter @AgileOpenFL 

Please join me and my family in supporting the Walk to End Hydrocephalus. Either walk with us or make a donation. Your donation will go towards someday ending Hydrocephalus. My baby has already had three brain surgeries and dozens of MRIs. People with this condition are known to have many brain surgeries over their lifetime. No more brain surgeries!

Source: 2018 St. Petersburg/Tampa Bay WALK: Stephanie Davis’s Personal Fundraising Page

It’s been four months and counting since I traded in my 13 year gig at Valpak for a new adventure at Catalina.  That and having a toddler has kept me busy every waking minute of the day.

Starting a new job after 13 years committed to Valpak was indeed strange.  I hadn’t had a first day in 13 years!  On the other hand, starting a new job in the same industry made things feel very familiar.  In many ways, it was like I was at the same company but working with new people with similar opportunities to pursue and challenges to overcome.

My start at Catalina was filled with surprises.  Within the first two weeks, I lost both my bosses, my boss and my boss’ boss.  It was a shock to the system, especially for someone that had worked for the same person for 13 years.  After an adjustment period, I quickly came to learn that this was the best thing that could have happened to me and my organization.  I now report direct to the COO (along with my org) as the Executive Director of the Enterprise Agility Office, a chance happening that the COO himself calls “serendipitous”.  I’ve since come to appreciate Catalina’s culture of change and plan to take full advantage of it to guide them through their agile transformation.

As I made my rounds and started to learn the people, the process, the products, and the problems, I heard a lot of … “we have a resource problem” (we all know an agilists pet peeve is calling people “resources”).  I was quick to observe that there was no “resource problem” but rather a prioritization problem.  There were hundreds of demands coming at the development teams and everyone had their #1 that they needed NOW.

With further exploration, I was pleased to see that there was definitely some semblance of agile across the entire Tech organization and even in some areas of the business.  Teams get an “E” for effort for doing and trying some version of Scrum or Kanban, even if most is really just “I use Jira and therefore I’m agile”.  It was evident that a big dose of training was needed along with a healthy serving of coaching and a lifetime of nurturing.

With all that said, you’re probably wondering if I’ve managed to get anything accomplished in these first four months at Catalina.  Indeed I have!

• I rebranded and reinvented the PMO as the “Enterprise Agility Office”, complete with the Agile Project Leader role I originally conceived at Valpak.  I’m now fully staffed and organized for success!
• I established an Agile Transformation Roadmap and an accompanying Kanban by which to manage it.
• We got in place what I consider the first and most important artifact of any agile transformation, the agile org design (aka, “Agile Teams”), which lays out all the Scrum and Kanban teams, their scope, and who’s who.
• A Common Sprint Schedule was established to put the entire enterprise on the same 2-week cadence, beginning on Mondays and ending on 2nd Fridays.  We are all currently on Sprint 11!  You can definitely expect a big celebration when we get to Sprint 100.
• Our first wave of agile training including a Scrum 101, Scrum for Product Owners, and Scrum for Scrum Masters was conducted in March.
• We’ve brought in an enterprise agility tool, Target Process, that is near and dear to my heart having worked with it for several years at Valpak.
• Using a lot of muscle memory and throwing in a few new tricks (remind me to blog about how we’re doing rank prioritization and relative value), I stood up a proper Agile Portfolio Management process complete with roadmapping, relentless prioritization, and a Portfolio Kanban with weekly standups.
• We kicked off several tribes to share, learn and grow together for Scrum Masters, Products Owners, Agile Project Managers, and even one for Agile Leadership.

So, what’s next?

• One of my Enterprise Agility Directors, Robert Shaw, is an experienced Agile Coach so together him and I have divvied up the agile teams to begin some hands on agile coaching.
• With a Common Sprint Schedule in place the next step is to establish a Common Sprint Review where all teams would come together to demo their sexy stuff and celebrate their accomplishments.
• We’ve got some heavy lifting to do to get all the teams in two different Jira instances moved over to Target Process before the end of the year.
• I’ve got high hopes of establishing more physical boards here at the St Pete headquarters beginning with the Portfolio Kanban. Maybe an agile tour will be possible some day.
• A second wave of agile training is on the way, this time including Kanban, Agile for Leaders, and eventually Agile for All.
• Last but not least, a passionate focus on growing my team, the Enterprise Agility Office, to be passionate practitioners of agile like myself.

All in all, I’m in a very happy place right now, making new friends, doing what I love, and taking an organization to the next level.  I’ve got good traction on all things agile and this company and my leadership wholeheartedly believes in it.  This is most certainly the beginnings of a transformation.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange

                 – David Bowie, “Changes”

Changes they are a happening!

After 13 years at Valpak (all working for the same man, I might add), I have resigned my position as Senior Director of Enterprise Agility.  It’s been a good ride but now I must move on. My work there is done and there is not much more I can do for Valpak, nor Valpak can do for me.  Beginning January 22nd, I will be joining Catalina Marketing as the Executive Director – Global Head of Enterprise Agility & Delivery Excellence.  I’m excited about the future but, for someone who specializes in adapting to change for a living, change has always been hard for me personally.

Three other changes to mention that aren’t quite as dramatic as the first.

• I ended my stint on the Agile Alliance board after serving a 3-year term.  It was an experience of a lifetime that took me all over the world working with many different people on all things agile.  I will always be grateful for that experience.  With baby on board now and his Hydrocephalus condition (I know, a whole other blog post unto itself), the travel commitments were just too much.  However, even though my time on the board has come to an end, my service to the Agile Alliance has not.  I’ve been asked to serve on the Conference Steering Committee where I can best represent the OnAgile virtual conference which has been my baby from my time on the board.
• I’ll continue to serve on the executive committee of the Tampa Bay Tech board (previously Tampa Bay Technology Forum).  However, this year I’m stepping up as Community Committee Chair (last year I was Co-Chair).  I’ll be joined by the very driven Gina Volmuth of The Praxsys Group as Co-Chair.  This year, we’ll be focused on continuing to grow the Tampa Bay Tech Meetup Pro, a co-op of almost 50 tech user groups comprising almost 15,000 unique members, as well as some exciting D&I initiatives.
• Last but not least, my partner in crime on Tampa Bay Agile has changed.  Ryan Dorrell retired as co-organizer and Becky Hartman graciously stepped up to help me out.  Ryan will be greatly missed!  Together, him and I (along with a slew of sub-group event organizers, volunteer presenters, and generous sponsors) grew the group from less than 100 people about five years ago to almost 2,300 members today and one of the largest and most active tech Meetups in the Tampa Bay area.  Last year Tampa Bay Agile was named “Meetup of the Year” at the 2017 Tampa Bay Tech Awards.

Today marks the 6^th agile anniversary here at Valpak.  Six years ago on October 14^th, 2011 we set out on our first sprint.  Since then, we have lathered, rinsed, and repeated the agile way for a whopping 142 sprints.  The transformation was complete a long time ago but the journey never ends.  Along the way, we’ve had good times where we thought we could accomplish anything and we delivered extraordinary value to the business.  On the flip side, we’ve had bad times where we felt so inundated with stories and tasks that we thought we couldn’t possibly get anything done.  We’ve had teams that have been together from the start and teams that have come and gone.  We’ve had teams go from Scrum to Kanban and back again and vice versa in their quest for high-performance.  We’ve conquered massive epics and nailed the art of the quick hit.  We’ve put up boards and taken down boards (and have the paper cuts and Sharpie stains to prove it).  We’ve retro’ed so much that we probably know too much about one another … too, too much.  We’ve openly shared our agile story and hosted agile tours for over 50 companies from all over Tampa Bay and beyond.  It’s been epic!

But, all this wouldn’t have been possible without the craftsmanship, pride, and heart (a whole lot of heart) of our people (not resources, but people); the people on our teams that work tirelessly sprint after sprint and story after story to deliver something that amazes our Product Owners, our stakeholders, and our customers.  And, those people couldn’t do what they do without the courage and direction of our elite team of Product Owners and our senior leaders, who themselves have been on their own agile journey.  Thank you to the people of Valpak for your collective effort in another year of not just doing agile but being agile too.  Cheers to you!