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Jeff Sutherland - Agile2018

Jeff Sutherland - Agile2018

FromAgileToolkit Podcast


Jeff Sutherland - Agile2018

FromAgileToolkit Podcast

ratings:
Length:
17 minutes
Released:
Aug 21, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

Where will Scrum@Scale take the Agile industry?  Co-creator of Scrum Jeff Sutherland sits down with @AgileToolkit to explore Scrum@Scale at Agile2018. Connect with Jeff Sutherland on Twitter. Learn more about Scrum@Scale.   @AgileToolkit is sponsored by LitheSpeed.   Transcript:   Bob Payne:  The Agile Toolkit. [background music] Bob:  I'm your host, Bob Payne. I'm here with Jeff Sutherland, one of the co‑creators of Scrum. Now you're working on Scrum at Scale. We're very excited about that at LitheSpeed. Just wanted to hear a little bit about Scrum at Scale and where you think that's going to take the industry. Jeff Sutherland:  It actually starts a long time ago. I was pulled out of medical school in 1983. For 15 years I was a research scientist, working with tools for Bell Labs. Learned how to write software for super‑computing, modeling the human cell. Really, all the basics of Scrum were formulated in that environment. When I was pulled out of the medical school by a big banking company they said, "Over at the medical school you guys have all the knowledge, but at the bank we have all the money." [laughter] Bob:  It's not an attractive feature of the banks. Jeff:  They made me an offer that my wife couldn't refuse... [crosstalk] Jeff:  ...the bank. [laughter] Bob:  Why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is. [laughs] Jeff:  Of course, the first thing I realize I'm working on their new technologies such as the vice president for advanced technologies. I noticed their projects are all late. They have hundreds and hundreds of programmers and we're running 150 banks all over North America. Our customers are actually CIOs of banks. I walked into the CEO's office one day and I said, "Have you noticed that all your projects are late?" He said, "Yeah, the customers are calling me screaming every morning. Bob:  The system's perfectly designed... [laughs] [crosstalk] Jeff:  I said, "I'm just a medical school professor, a mathematician, a computer scientist, but I've looked at their Gantt charts on the wall. You have whole walls of Gantt charts and these tasks, names, and dates. I calculated the probability of being late using this Gantt chart and it's 0.9999999. You're virtually certain to be late on every project. It's a completely inappropriate method to manage projects with lots of change like software.. Bob:  Or uncertainty. Jeff:  He said, "Well, what should I do?" I said, "Well, you authorized me to keep this grant." When I came to medical school I had this grant from the Kellogg Foundation. A leadership grant where I had to with 50 national leaders travel around the world a third of my time for three years. To my surprise the CEO said he was going to support it. He said he thought he was going to get his money back, basically. I said, "You know, I've been running around the world and a subgroup of our leaders are actually business school professors. I've been talking to them about the bank, and they say we need to create a completely new operating model within the bank, a little company within a company, an entrepreneurial startup." I said, "That's what we ought to do." I said, "Here's the way these operate. I need everybody sales marketing, support, installation. I'm going to split them into small teams, four or five people. We're going to have product marketing come in on Monday morning and prioritize everything they're doing by value. Friday afternoon everything is going to be done and if it's software it's live. I need you to give me the whole operation. You and senior management can be my board of directors. I will report to you the financials once a month. The rest of the time you have to stay out of my company because I don't want you messing it up." He said, "We'll that's not going to be as much fun as looking at new technology." [laughter] Jeff:  I said, "It needs to be fixed." He said, "OK, you've got it." You've got that headache. He gave me the worst business unit in the bank. We split them into smal
Released:
Aug 21, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Agile Toolkit Podcast. Broadcasting conversations about Agile Software Development, Agile Methodologies, techniques and tools.