Her specialty is Lean Kanban for professional services including functional departments like marketing, finance, procurement and administration. She also optimises Project Management Office (PMO) delivery and IT operations.

Becci combines Lean practices she has found to be most effective for service delivery such as Lean Kanban, Continuous Improvement (aka: Kata) and Systems Thinking.

When combining these ways of working called Kanban Accelerated Delivery, Becci has obtained results of 15% to 40% uplift in productivity with higher quality within six months.

Books Becci has read specific to Lean:

• Essential Kanban by David Anderson
• Kanban from the Inside by Mike Burrows
• Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business by David Anderson
• Stop Starting, Start Finishing! By Arne Roock
• The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen
• Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Project with Kanban by Henrik Kniberg
• Kanban in action by Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sunden
• The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford
• Beyond the Pheonix Project by Gene Kim and John Willis
• Managing to Learn by John Shook
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
• Learning to See by Mike Rother and John Shook
• The Work of Management: A Daily Path to Sustainable Improvement by Jim Lancaster
• The Toyota Way by Jeffrey K. Liker
• The Machine that Changed the World by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos
• Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results by Mike Rother
• Making Work Visible: Exposing time theft to optimize work and flow by Dominica DeGrandis
• Developing Lean Leaders at all Levels: A Practical Guide by Jeffrey K. Liker
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
• Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones
• Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale by Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky and Barry O’Reilly

Lean courses Becci has attended:

• Kanban Systems Design & Kanban Management Foundations Practitioner (KMP1), Lean Kanban University
• Kanban Management Professional (KMP2), Lean Kanban University
• Certified Lean Change Agent Practitioner, Lean Change Management Association
• Playing Lean 2 Game Master facilitator for Lean Start-up
• Toyota Kata (Lean Continuous Improvement Coaching), TWI Institute
• Kata Manufacturing Simulation, TWI Institute

Contact Becci to discuss your needs today.

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I said I would be happy to, but because I normally charge thousands of dollars to host a Playing Lean Workshop (See details here) I wanted people to value my contribution also.  Meetups are about uplifting the local community, but that doesn’t mean we also can’t take the opportunity to give someone else a hand up (instead of a hand out).

So we charged $10 per person to play the board game about start-ups and at the same time could help women in developing countries to start their own business and get their family out of poverty through a not-for-profit microfinance Opportunity International.  It has only been 24 hours since the meetup was announced and we are already half full, so it is sure to be a sell out.

Here’s a short video about how women entrepreneurs in developing countries are taking small loans to start a business to feed their family and send their children to school, breaking the cycle of poverty.

This is what we wrote in our meetup, to explain to people that it would be by donation. Perhaps it can inspire you to offer something you’re good at for your charity.

Please Contact Becci to organise another charity fundraiser Playing Lean.

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It is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, first published in 2011.

These principles in the Lean Startup can be applied by new businesses that are just starting out, but equally into the processes or ways of working for established enterprises doing new product or service development.

Check out this 7 minute video that intros The Lean Startup.

Too busy to ready the book?  No worries! Listen to it on your phone
You can buy The Lean Startup book as PDF, ePUB for electronic readers or paper format.  But if you’re time poor, try starting with the audio book.

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Get the facts from the author that started it all, Dan Jones of the Lean Enterprise Academy and co-author of the books The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking describes lean thinking in this six minute video.

The post What is Lean? appeared first on Becci Watson.

Today I’m giving away a Scrum Master job description template for you to download.

In a number of my roles I have either set up Scrum Teams from scratch or have recruited a Scrum Master as my replacement (or both). So I figure I’ve had a few cracks at this and I might be saving someone else time.

This Scrum Master job description is quite generic, with intended use of an IT software delivery team.  It is deliberately taken as much as possible, word for word from The Scrum Guide^TM.

To this end I happily acknowledge that a lot of the copyright for the Scrum Master job description (particularly in the Duties & Responsibilities and Role Objective sections) is fittingly attributed to authors Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland via ©2016 Scrum.Org and ScrumInc for The Scrum Guide^TM. It is used under the Attribution Share-Alike license of Creative Commons.

At the time of posting the Scrum Master job description uses the latest version from July 2016.

Two formats of the same document are available to instantly download:
a) Microsoft Word in .docx format so that you can easily edit to make it your own; and
b) .pdf format for any reader like Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Click here to download Scrum Master job description free in .docx format.

Click here to download Scrum Master job description free in .pdf format.

A few helpful notes:

• Where you see <wordinside> this means you delete the arrows and words inside to replace it with customised content to your circumstances
• Essential experience and skills on page two are numbered from highest priority to lowest priority. These essentials have the highest weighting.  So above all else I suggest favouring candidates that meet these with the one essential attribute and one essential qualification.
• The desirable or nice to have skills are just a bonus. All other things being equal, I wouldn’t take someone with all of these if they didn’t have the essentials.
• Paper pages are A4 size, so if you are from outside Australia, you may like to adjust this.
• This is not for an Iteration Manager. I’ve not recruited for this agile delivery role, even though there are some similarities.
• Note that technical skills are of very little importance. A great facilitator with Scrum experience will do 10 times a better job than an inexperienced Scrum Master with poor facilitation skills even though they have lots of technical expertise like detailed knowledge of coding.

I use this Scrum Master job description template as a foundation and then add where necessary. Some other areas of responsibility that are not covered in The Scrum Guide^TM may include:

• Responsible for leading the recruitment and selection of Scrum Team members based on capability gaps, values and personality fit for a self-organising, cross-functional team. This does not necessarily mean a Scrum Master makes the final decision on their own, the Scrum Team should collaborate all through the process.
• Responsible for leading and facilitating the professional development of Scrum Team members. This does not mean the Scrum Master has to be the sole source of agile nor technical training, instead they can help Scrum Team members get on the job training using pair work with others or they can help to identify external courses they can attend.

Contact me here if you would like to hire an awesome Scrum Master in Sydney, Australia – click here to check out my Scrum Master contracting services offered.

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My Story of how Whatties and Howies came about…

My goal as a Scrum Master is to find the fastest way I can get people to grasp any concept and run with it as their own. I am constantly trying to simplify terminology and jargon.  I do this by relating new concepts to things they are already familiar with.

Here’s how I’d explain the Scrum role back to basics:

Mr Product Owner, you do ‘What’ and only What.

Scrum Development Team, together you only do the ‘How’. 

Both roles are expected to make suggestions and collaborate, but the Whattie has the final say as being the accountable for ‘What’ is done and the Howies get the final say on ‘How’ they’re going to do it.

Together we are all Scrummies and we as Scrum team are jointly responsible for the outcome.

How I use Whatties and Howies ..

These metaphors are exaggerated expressions intended to give effect to the impact of the Scrum Roles and to paint a vivid picture of the purpose of the Scrum roles.   It helps people to know who to go to with their query and to better appreciate that neither is ‘in charge’ of the other and both roles collaborate together.

Use Whatties & Howies to Focus on Responsibilities

I use these names to correct behaviours that don’t stick the roles.  Essentially to give focus to the purpose of their role.  For example, I had a person from a traditional project management background that took on the role of Product Owner.  Being a PM he was used to dictating both what and how –  with the how’s typically in minute detail.  In the first few Sprints he kept picking up what I perceived as small technical nuances in preferred delivery techniques and asking me to correct the Howies to do it his way.
I asked the Product Owner: “Are you a Whattie or a Howie?” 

He said: A Whattie

To which as a Scrum Master I replied:  “Thanks for your suggestion, Mr Product Owner.   But I need you to spend all your energy building us a Product Backlog that has user stories to the Definition of Ready two sprints in advance.  Getting the funnel or pipeline full of right-sized and prioritised user stories is many magnitudes more important to the success of this team than nit picking at the How’s.  I have no doubt that the things you suggest are of value.  But if you don’t give us the What, seen as that is your primary role on this team, then we are doomed.  In traditional project management terms, right now if I had to do a risk register, I’d put your role as a red traffic light and our biggest risk.  Your role is so critical  and I need you to focus on What and just the What. So how about you master the What and when you’ve got a perfectly refined backlog that’s on track to meet project objectives to the definition of Ready, let’s talk.”

After this, he smiled and said “You’re right” as he rubbed the Howie instructions he was detailing off the whiteboard and turned to focus on the meeting.  Interestingly enough, we never had that conversation again as I think he got the importance of focussing on What.

Use Whatties & Howies to Identify People in A Role

I also use it when I’m setting up appointments in a shared calendar, I’ll say “Whatties stand-up”.  If I’m setting up a coaching session I’ll let them know which role/s need to attend.

I use it in Microsoft Exchange’s Active Directory distribution lists like #Cloud Howies where the Cloud is the name of the scrum team  #<projectname> Howies. Once I have this list, it makes meetings or internal communication easier.

It’s also easier for dyslexic people like me when I accidentally abbreviated the Scrum Development Team SDT to ‘STD’.  Understandably people were most offended by being associated with the most common use of this acronym Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

It’s also really, really handy if you have two Scrum Development Team’s working off the one backlog.  For example, when I have two Scrum Development Teams where they self-named themselves Spark and Atomic, the Active Directory distribution list became

#Cloud Atomic Howies  and #Cloud Sparks Howies  using the format #<projectname> <scrumteam> Howies.

Use Whatties & Howies to Help Non-Scrum to Get it

And the piece de resistance (aka: my best use) is when I’m introducing the roles to people outside the Scrum in visual management.

I want to make it really simple for people outside the Scrum who haven’t had any Scrum training to understand who’s doing what so they know which person/s they should go to.  When I bring key stakeholders into a project room and walk them through the walls, I use the Whattie and Howie terms so they ‘get it’ fast.

You would hear me say something like this …

See this wall over here, this is What we are going to be doing. From our highest priority to our lowest priority.  It’s called our Product Backlog.  The one person that is exclusively responsible for ‘What’ we do on this wall is the Product Owner.  If you have any suggestions on What you want to see, you’re wasting your oxygen speaking with anyone else on the team or outside the team including the business sponsor, take it straight to the Whattie that owns the product. 

Walking to another wall in the project room, you’ll hear me say something like this…

See this wall over here, this is the wall that tells you How we are doing the work for this fortnight.  We call it the Sprint Backlog. These people over here, the Scrum Development Team are all Howies.  They manage their own ‘How’ wall.  So if you have a problem with any part of How we’re doing something, go direct to the source of the Howies, because only they are the only ones that can fix it. The Product Owner is not their manager, he is their equal and we have strict roles in a flat team structure.

If you don’t know if your issue is about the ‘What’ or ‘How’ then see me as the Scrum Master and I’ll forward it on.

How I do NOT to use Whatties and Howies metaphors

I don’t use Whatties and Howies formally on any position description, job description or organisational chart as this dilutes the real and correct Scrum Roles as given in the Scrum Framework.

Hope this helps Scrum Masters going into organisations that are very new to Scrum and they have a lot of key stakeholders to get up to speed quickly on who does what.

The post Whatties and Howies: Informal Metaphors for Scrum Roles appeared first on Becci Watson.

Services priced on a daily rate + GST billed via Pty Ltd with ABN and insurances like Professional Indemnity and/Public Liability included.

Call Becci now to discuss your needs by Contacting Becci here.

Transformation Leadership Roles Becci Offers
Click on the sticky notes below for details on skills and experience that Becci can help you with:

 

Projects or IT Technical Experience

• Digital including large scale web development
• Software as a Service (SaaS) including portal development
• Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing
• Cloud DevOps
• CRM Migration and Customisation

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6⁺ Years’ Experience Coaching New Product Development
Coaching is not new to Becci, she brings 6⁺ years’ experience as General Manager of a new product development consultancy.

In this role, she won three consecutive contracts with the State Government to provide coaching and consulting services to hundreds of people a year.  She established and mentored  a team of new product experts plus provided coaching and consulting to those with the most promising technologies.

Becci’s Skills as an Agile Coach
An Agile Coach switches between wearing lots of hats.  Here’s some examples of what and Agile Coach may do in a typical week:

• Trainer – develop customised training material and deliver workshops
• Facilitator – at either delivery team level for any scrum event or workshops at a program and executive level
• Counsellor – listening to individuals and encouraging them to see things differently
• Delivery Leader – taking on responsibility for a delivery role and leading the adoption of practices in a pilot
• Mentor – upskilling and preparing Scrum Masters in team building skills, supporting Product Owners when the pressure is on, challenging line managers to empower subordinates
• Consultant – conducting agility audits and developing customised frameworks or delivery operating models
• Change negotiator – creating consensus in working agreements for changes in practices, policies or governance

Becci brings a stash of interactive games for experiential learning and team building to assist in the adoption of agile practices at the delivery team level.  However, she is  most interested in roles that include PMO structuring for portfolio and program delivery so that board level funding practices align with accountability of delivery all the way from the top to the bottom.

Contact Becci Today
Call Becci now to discuss what agility you’d like see in your enterprise by Contacting Becci here.

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Eric Ries, Author, The Lean Startup

In 2011 Eric Ries released a book called The Lean Startup.  It taught us a more effective way of working using a product/service development process that meets customer needs and maximises a business’ return on investment.

The fastest way to learn these powerful principles of The Lean Startup is to play the board game Playing Lean.  It’s an interactive simulation using a board game where you compete to launch and grow an online product and build market share.  Discover how to make resource allocation decisions to generate sales, conduct experiments and build your product to be the first to reach the mass market.

Who will Benefit?
This workshop is ideal for people in roles that create new products and services plus those who influence a business’ ways of working for either projects or Business As Usual (BAU) operational.  Job roles typically include:

• Product Owners
• Product Managers
• Product General Managers
• Product Developers
• UX & CX Designers
• Agile Project Managers
• Agile Delivery Manager
• Agile Coaches
• Scrum Masters
• Marketing Operations
• Project Management Office (PMO) leaders
• Transformation Managers/Directors

Typical Playing Lean Startup Workshop Agenda

In this workshop, Becci uses the triple reinforcement to maximise learning.
..  She teaches The Lean Startup principles (See One)
.. we reinforce these by applying the Lean Startup practices by playing the game (Do One)
.. we create a customised action plan to start applying these practices and teaching others the improvement to ways of working and new product development processes (Teach One)

The typical agenda is:

• Introductions – facilitator learns participants’ expectations and experience with Lean Startup and product development by experimentation
• Fundamentals of Lean Startup – facilitator teaches the fundamental Lean Startup principles (the condensed highlights of the book)
• Rules of Playing Lean – participants get into teams and learn the rules of the game
• Let’s Play – participants play with the facilitator highlighting key learnings along the way
• Retrospective – participants share what they learned, what worked and what didn’t and why
• Action Plan – together we create an action plan for participants to return to work and change our ways of working to incorporate the key practices
• Wrap Up & Close

Playing Lean Startup Workshop Details
Minimum: 4 participants
Maximum: 12 participants
Workshop Duration: 3.5 – 4.5 hours, depending on whether participants have read The Lean Startup book previously or have applied any of the practices.

Becci is a certified Playing Lean Game Master facilitator.  She brings experience having applied The Lean Startup process with experimentation into transformations to operational ways of working.

Book your Playing Lean Startup Workshop, Contact Becci today.

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Product Owner Skills
Becci brings the following skills in product development and management to the Product Owner role:

Becci is Trained by International Author & Product Management Expert

Product Owner Experience
Becci spent 18 months developing a Software as a Service (SaaS) 3-tier portal for both B2B and B2C users.
At UNSW she wrote the position description, recruited and trained 3 Product Owners in a cloud devops scrum team.
At AMP Becci wrote the position description and  introduced a Program Backlog with a Program Backlog Lead (aka:Chief Product Owner) into a transformation program.
Becci supplements this with 5+ years experience as General Manager of a New Product Development consultancy where she led a team that provided product feasibility, market research, product development, authored a product training series on DVD and provided product marketing expertise to hundreds of people a year.

Contact Becci Today
Call Becci now to discuss what you’d like for your Product Owner by Contacting Becci here.

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