AFH 048: How Project Managers Can Fit on Agile Teams [PODCAST]

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Justin Browder (@justin_browder) and Bryan Schoeff (@bryanschoeff) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss how project managers and developers can find common ground on Agile teams.

[featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Justin Browder and Bryan Schoeff Presenting at The Path to Agility Conference – Copyright COHAA[/featured-image]

Justin Browder is a Senior Consultant at AXIA Consulting. Since joining as the 10th employee in 2008, he has helped AXIA scale the company to over 70 employees while consulting as a Program Manager, Project Manager, and Product Manager within the retail, government, and utility industries.

Bryan Schoeff is a Senior Consultant at AXIA Consulting. Since joining as the 56th employee in 2014, he has done little to help scale AXIA to nearly 70 employees (ha!). For the last 14 years, Bryan has worked on technology projects as a Software Developer and Solutions Architect focusing on web and mobile technologies in the government and utility industries.

In this episode you’ll discover:

• How empathy plays a key role in bringing project managers and developers together
• Why estimates can feel unsafe
• When proper expectations are set, great things can happen

Links from the show:

• Justin’s Blog Site – http://www.justinbrowder.online/
• The Perfect Strangers Book is Coming!
• AXIA Consulting

[callout]Scale collaboration, not process. If you’re trying to use agile and lean at the program level, you’ve heard of several approaches, all about scaling processes. If you duplicate what one team does for several teams, you get bloat, not delivery. Instead of scaling the process, scale everyone’s collaboration. With autonomy, collaboration, and exploration, teams and program level people can decide how to apply agile and lean to their work.

Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout]

[reminder]What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Please share your ideas below.[/reminder]

Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish.

One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks!

This podcast is brought to you by Agile Dev East.

Techwell’s Agile Dev East is *the* premier event that covers the latest advances in the agile community. Agile for Humans listeners can use the code AGILE16 to receive $200 off their conference registration fee.

Check out the entire program at adceast.techwell.com. You’ll notice that I’m speaking there this year. Attendees will have a chance to see my Business of Agile presentation, along with my half day session on advanced scrum topics called Scrum: Answering the Tough Questions.

I hope to see many Agile for Humans listeners in Orlando, Florida – November 13th – 18th for this great event.