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Adam Gonnerman

Enterprise Agilist ◆ Project Leader ◆ Non-Profit Founder

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Q1 Media Universe Map by Evan Shapiro

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- May 19, 2023

Evan Shapiro media and entertainment

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The Journey to Agile Transformation: A Scrum-Based Approach

- November 17, 2023

The concept of Agile transformation, particularly in industries perceived as traditional, such as publishing, often comes with a heavy dose of skepticism. A pivotal moment in my career was steering such a transformation for a publishing company’s engineering team, aiming to adopt Scrum methodologies. The journey, although fraught with challenges, offers valuable insights into driving change even in the most unlikely environments. Overcoming Leadership Hesitancy Initially, the transformation encountered resistance. A new boss, with roots in a different era of publishing, held the belief that Agile frameworks, with their iterative nature and flexible deadlines, were incompatible with the rigorous deadline commitments of our industry. This underscored a common misunderstanding of Agile: it’s not a lack of structure or discipline, but a more responsive and efficient way to manage projects. Despite efforts to clarify this, my explanations met with resistance, leading to a professional parti

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor and Power in the Age of Automation (Book Review)

- May 22, 2024

In his compelling book, " The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation ," Carl Benedikt Frey offers a sweeping examination of the historical and ongoing impact of mechanization and automation on society. Starting with the onset of the first Industrial Revolution, Frey deftly navigates through the evolution of technology up to the modern age of artificial intelligence, presenting a nuanced view of how technological innovations have reshaped labor markets and power dynamics. Frey categorizes technological innovations into two types: enabling technologies, like the typewriter, which enhance worker productivity without displacing the labor force, and replacing technologies, such as robotic machinery in factories, which eliminate certain job roles altogether. This distinction forms the backbone of Frey’s analysis, as he explores the varying implications of each type of technology on different segments of the workforce. The book traces a historical patter

The Dual Faces of Technology: Enhancing and Replacing Jobs

- May 27, 2024

Automation has been on my mind a lot lately, more immediately due to a book I read , but also because of the looming reality of artificial intelligence. To understand what's involved, making the distinction between replacing technologies and enabling technologies is crucial. As we traverse the timeline of the 20th century, we observe how each type of technology has distinctly influenced employment. Automated technologies have transformed industries by replacing manual labor with machines. Consider the automated switchboards introduced in the early 20th century. Previously, telephone operators manually connected calls using physical connectors on a switchboard. With the advent of automated switchboards in the 1920s and 1930s, many of these jobs were eliminated as calls were routed through electromechanical systems. Similarly, in agriculture, the introduction of mechanical harvesters like the combine harvester in the 1930s drastically reduced the need for manual labor. These machine

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Essential Scrum Metrics

- August 11, 2020

Some of my most rewarding professional experiences have been in leading teams through Agile transformations, adopting scrum. I've guided not only engineering teams through this transition, but even business and operations groups such as the archivists at a major media company. Very early at a publishing company a supervisor told me that "we won't do Agile" because people with our brands "need deadlines." He believed that Agile meant 'loosey-goosey' and inefficient. He also believed that we wouldn't get good metrics from a scrum team. That's definitely not the case, and in this piece I'll provide a brief overview of 3 metrics that I believe should be observed and reported. First, the sprint and release burndown will provide a view of the team's progress at a glance. This chart is a representation of the effort remaining over a period of time, and if updated on a daily basis it can help the scrum master to predict whether the team will

Essential Kanban Metrics

- August 10, 2020

While most of the Agile transformations I've guided were into Scrum, there have been some Kanban teams along the way. If done poorly, Kanban is merely understood as a task list on a board shared by a team. That really isn't the way it's supposed to be. Today I'm going to outline briefly the metrics to look for in Kanban, which should provide the insight needed to do a proper transition to Kanban. While I'm making the assumption here that the reader already has an idea of what Kanban is, here's a succinct description provided by Atlassian : Kanban is a popular framework used to implement agile software development. It requires real-time communication of capacity and full transparency of work. Work items are represented visually on a kanban board, allowing team members to see the state of every piece of work at any time. The first metric to look for in Kanban is cycle time. With cycle time you are measuring how long a task remains in process before completion. If

Deputy Product Owners

- May 18, 2019

"The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must address the Product Owner." - The Scrum Guide There are a lot of ways in which my approach to Scrum differs from what's in the official guide, and since that document refers to Scrum as 'immutable,' let's just call what I do 'Notscrum™.' In Scrum, there is only one product owner per team. That person is the sole person responsible for the product backlog, and the person who advocates for the work to be done. In Notscrum there is one product owner, but there can be multiple deputy product owners. Here's how it works. When my program at Viacom was first forming I met with the then-director of the Library & Archive group and learned that while he set the priorities on work done, the archivists were organized in three distinct areas with a team lead

No Projects Are Agile

- June 02, 2019

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." — Andrew Carnegie Every time I hear a vendor say "we're going to do this as an Agile project," I shudder. This has happened twice, so perhaps my sample size is too small, but the fruit of such an endeavor are predictable from the attitude going in. You see, there's really no such thing as an Agile project, as I see it. There are only Agile teams. If the team isn't Agile, the work they do will only hold the form of Scrum, Kanban, or some other methodology, but the mindset will be absent. The result is a subpar project that convinces everyone involved that Agile is a bad idea. Being Agile is a way of thinking about work, a philosophy that is embraced, internalized, and translated into action. The team is at the center, and their work demonst

Agile Gatekeeping

- May 25, 2019

It's one thing when agile coaches pipe up with "that's not Scrum," and quite another when accusations of "fake Agile" are thrown around. I find the former irksome, but at least they have a leg to stand on with the 'End Note' of The Scrum Guide in their corner: "Scrum is free and offered in this Guide. Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum . Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices." (emphasis mine) This is why I've taken to calling any more pragmatic approach 'Notscrum.' After all, if they insist that Scrum is 'immutable' ( like Plato's heavenly perfections ), then clearly what I introduce to teams and use to coach them is a more mutable creature, one that adapts to situations to achieve the dream of Agile. "We are uncovering better

Increasing Sprint Capacity

- May 23, 2019

"You can't be agile when you're knee-deep in mud." - Martin Fowler One of many mistaken ideas I held when I first got into Agile project management was that over time a Scrum team should be able to increase its overall velocity. The scenario I had in mind assumed that the team was stable and had become consistent on forecasting story point values (commit vs complete). The problem begins right there, with those two assumptions, and goes much further. There are ways to improve team velocity, but there are limits. First, although a team may be fortunate in remaining stable over a period of months or years, this is not something I've found to be the case very often. Team members come and go, sometimes because they're reassigned and other times because people naturally come and go from the company. One often overlooked source of instability is out-of-office time, whether through maternity/paternity leave, vacations, or illness. Capacity planning can be challenged

Life Without The Breakroom

- April 14, 2020

A lot of advice is circulating around online about how to manage working from home. The lists include genuinely useful tips, like keeping a regular schedule, staying hydrated, taking breaks, and having a designated work space. That's all very important. An element that I see missing from many lists is the social aspect. Now, I don't go to work to socialize, but spending at least 8 waking hours per day in the office means that's where most of my life is spent, so it's going to happen. It's part of being human, and it's helpful on so many levels to know the people you work with. There's also the serendipity that happens, when people cross paths in the hall and realize that they have answers or assistance to provide on a given project. Working from home, as so many of us are during the COVID-19 pandemic, means that this aspect of work is severely reduced. Here are some tips for restoring at least some of it. First, I've taken to doing individual check-ins w

Objections to Change

- June 06, 2019

"Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything" ― George Bernard Shaw "All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward." — Ellen Glasgow It happens when I kick off a project that will alter existing processes. It also happens when I introduce Agile to teams. Whatever the scenario, human beings are creatures of habit, and so when change is brought up, dread, anxiety, and resistance are usually the immediate reaction. The good aspect of this is that not all change should be accepted. Establishing a rule that all office photocopies have to be documented on a shared document, including number of pages and purpose, is likely to get a lot of pushback. It represents a lack of trust in employees, and creates additional work for them as well. Anyone would be right to argue against such a rule, perhaps advocating for a guidelines quantifying what would be considered excessive use, and asking people to be respo

Scrum is Mutable

- January 15, 2018

The Scrum Guide has changed a few times, and the most recent revision was published in November 2017. Although a number of people have contributed to defining Scrum over the years, the key parties and primary authors of the Scrum guide are Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. That Scrum has changed over the years should not come as a surprise to anyone who is familiar with it or with Agile in general. Change is core to Scrum, with 'inspect and adapt' being a key activity for teams. With this comes learning that can at times be universalized and shared with teams everywhere. When it is particularly compelling it becomes part of the Scrum standard. Scrum is mutable. Several months ago I was listening to an Agile podcast and end up shutting it off about 20 minutes in because the guests and the host attacked Scrum itself as a bad methodology and then turned around and complained that 'no one does Scrum right.' One guest seemed to think it was downright scandalous that Agile t

An Example of Grade vs. Quality

- January 05, 2022

In the world of project management, which has been my professional area for over 10 years at this point, I learned very early on about the difference between grade and quality. The PMBOK Guide, the central tome of project management, defines grade in part as "a category assigned to deliverables having the same functional use but different technical characteristics." Clear as mud, right? Quality, for its part, refers to conformance to requirements and fitness for use. To explain the difference, let me tell you about my food dehydrator. November of last year (2021) I brought some pears back from my trip home to Missouri. Realizing that I couldn't eat them all, even baking two pies from them, I ordered a food dehydrator so I could save some for later snacking. I found one online with nearly 5 starts and plenty of positive reviews. It's a straightforward device, which can sit on my kitchen countertop, and which has a few racks so layers of fruit can be dried at the same t

Q1 Media Universe Map by Evan Shapiro

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