Stories Connecting Dots With Markus Andrezak

"Calm down, take a deep breath and just talk to me“   Luke Hohmann’s new mission: Participatory Budgeting in Schools Luke Hohmann founded FirstRoot to advance participatory budgeting in schools. Let me get straight to the point: You can invest in this company in this early stage. You can also support the cause by talking about or by simply using the free software and talking about it in your kids’ school.  Luke Hohmann and me go back a long time. I met him ca. 12 years ago in one of his trainings and was fortunate enough to co-train and facilitate with him. He wrote an early book „Beyond Software Architecture“ which to me is one of the best books on software Architecture (sic!) and was ahead of its time. He then got deep into Serious Games with his Innovation Games trainings and a great book on it. Also ahead of its time. From there he was on a constant path towards which had to end in what he does now. Through his Innovation Games, he made it to participatory budgeting in communities, in the Enterprise and

Timo Lutter und seine Frau Jule sind Deutsche, die in Oslo wohnen und arbeiten. Timo hat lange als Molekularbiologe gearbeitet und arbeitet jetzt in Oslo im Rikshospitaletals Mikro-Biologe. Jule arbeitet in Oslo als Kindergärtnerin. Beide sind höchstwahrscheinlich wahrscheinlich Covid-19-positiv und tragen die Krankheit in ihrem sogenannten „milden“ Verlauf aus. Die beiden berichten aus Ihrer Erfahrung mit der Krankheit, dass schon das ist nicht mal eben einer lockeren Virusgrippe entspricht. Ich habe die Chance genutzt, Timo ein bisschen seines Virologen-Wissens zu entlocken und so kommen wir zu Erklärungen darüber was ein Virus ist was es heisst, einen Virus zu sequentieren   warum sich Timo sicher ist, dass das Virus auf keinen Fall ein „Designervirus“ ist was Timo’s Einschätzungen zu den getroffenen Massnahmen ist wie sich Gesundheitssysteme aufgrund gegebener Umstände unterscheiden und welchen Einfluß das auf den Umgang mit dem Virus hat. Ich wusste vorher nicht, dass Tino so viel Vorwissen zu dem Them

This is the story of Peter Bihr and his family whoa actually wanted to visit a wedding in the United States, but instead got stranded in Costa rica. Peter and his family accidentally find themselves locked up in a place which turns out to be a bit of a paradise. There could, of course be better times and conditions to find and enjoy a paradise. But let’s listen how Peter perceives his current situation. If you know of other weird stories happening during these strange and difficult time, let me know and maybe we could make this another episode! You can reach Peter for more on his great work here.  He also publishes a fantastic, interesting and personal email newsletter.    Have fun, stay healthy and sane!

Strategie Machen! Henning Wolf hat mich im Hotelzimmer bei einer Konferenz interviewt. Es geht um mein Thema Nummer eins, neben Produkt: Strategie Machen! Wir erklären, was an Strategie kaputt ist und wie man es fixen kann. Wir erklären, was die drei relevanten Ebenen in Strategie sind und wie man sie wieder koppeln kann, um alles zu reparieren. Denn es ist das Koppeln dieser drei Ebenen, was Strategie repariert. Die drei Ebenen sind: Marker: unsere Identität, ausgedrückt über unseren Antrieb, langfristige Ziele. Alles was ausdrückt, wer uns was wir sind und was wir in der Gesellschaft bewirken wollen. Unsere Identität eben. Optionen: Das ist alles, was wir als nächstes tun könnten. Alle Möglichkeiten, die wir haben. Da wir nicht alles machen können, was wir gerne machen würden, entscheidet die beste Auswahl, die Qualität unserer Entscheidungen und Committments darüber, wie es uns geht. Arbeit: Arbeit soll fliessen und es muss passend viel Arbeit auf gute Optionen angewandt werden. Arbeit auf schlechten Optio

Dan Vacanti - Rightsizing I met Dan years and years ago in my active time in the Kanban community. Dan was part of the very beginning of Kanban in 2007! Since then he’s been deep into Lean and Agile. Dan authored two books, "Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability“ and "When will it be done?“. He is also the founder of Actionable Agile. Dan always had his independent thought. Most of all, he is a builder of bridges. He worked hard with Scrum.org on integrating the good ideas of Scrum and Kanban. Also, he organises the conference LeanAgile US which just happened from 25 -27 Feb 2019 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Possibly most noteworthy, Dan's twitter Avatar is not the usual egg provided by twitter, but a self made picture of an egg.  Here excerpts of our conversation as a loose transcript. don't take it word by word, please! Show Notes:  The underlying idea for all of us is to maximise customer value. Cost of Delay is a tool suggested as basis for ranking, prioritising and sequencing on a more objective bas

Part II   This is part two of the conversation I had with Jabe Bloom and Marc Burgauer during the Devops Conference 2018 in Munich. All information can be found in the show notes of part 1, which is Episode 21 of this podcast. Here some short show notes on this second part. Show Notes On Bid Data & being Data Driven "Russell Ackoff wrote a brilliant paper titled "On Data Mismanagement Systems and the basic thesis is: Managers need data to make decisions and the more data they have, the better it is. Of course, the answer is: Managers don't need more information, they need the right information" "Of course, big data is a response to a particular problem and the particular problem is "Oh god, we made such big piles of data that no human can actually process it anymore. And now we have to come up with an algorithm to summarise the data for us." On Change & Culture "By definition all future things are stories. They don't exist. That's why they're in the future. You can't measure them. You can't use data t

Jabe Bloom and Marc Burgauer - Designing Systems Last week, beginning of December 2018, I happened to be guest of the DevOps Conference in Munich. The nice people from the organising company gave me the chance to actually make it a family meeting with my pals J Paul Reed (a giant in the field of DevOps), Marc Burgauer (from Scotland, doing Agile consulting in Banking) and Jabe Bloom (co-founder and chief scientist of Praxisflow). It was 3 really busy days, the bunch of us were continuously mingling in giving talks, workshops, being active in a panel and all kinds of fun. Finally on the last day, we all gave a huge workshop together, using all kinds of techniques and tools from all of our fields and it felt like really great collaboration - throwing together all our expertise from all the fields we've been busy in and merging the approaches. Collaboration without vanity and really sharing. It rarely feels this good!!! On the evening before the workshop, Marc, Jabe and me sat down in my hotel room and recorded

I follow Matt since years. he has a couple of great books out, his latest one possibly being the top pick. It is called "Winning the brain Game". In "Winning the brain Game", Matt explains 7 fundamental flaws of the brain which hold us back from being the best problem solvers we could be. He describes how he discovered them, gives explanations from the fields of psychology and neuro science and finally gives hints on fixes for these flaws.  I discovered Matt by means of a different book he wrote quite a couple of years ago. The book was called "The laws of subtraction" in which he gave structure on how to make things simpler and how to address that problem. At the time I headed a product which was really a complicated mess and the book helped me think through several of the problems I had at the time and I have it in find memories.  Matt comes up with the following categories of flaws:  "Misleading", which contains the flaws of Leaping (jumping to the first best, shallow solution), Fixation (being stuck on

Intro Diese Folge ist für mich ganz besonders! Als ich Norbert besucht habe, kam ich dafür in meinen alten Berliner Kiez, in dem ich fast 20 Jahre lang gewohnt habe. (Ich war ganz ausser mir, als ich mich da umgesehen habe ;) Und auch Norbert kenne ich seit den frühen 90ern, als wir noch Autobahnkilometer auf dem Weg zu Mountainbike-Rennen abgespult haben. Natürlich haben wir auch Stunde um Stunde beim Training auf Waldwegen und -abwegen verbracht und auch in Rennen. Wenn das Gute so nah ist, ist es manchmal schwer zu erkennen, was man überhaupt vor sich hat. Und so hat es bis jetzt gebraucht um Norbert zu interviewen und mehr über sein Geschäft und seine Industrie zu lernen. Und so ist diese Folge noch mehr als viele andere true to title: In andere Welten eintauchen um Verbindungen zu finden. Norbert Haller, designed seit 20 Jahren e-Bikes. Ich habe mich in seiner Werkstatt umgeschaut. Seit langem interessiert mich, wie man das alles in Hardware anstellt, denn Hardware ist cool. Und die Skalierung bei Fahrr

Netflix. Wir schauen es alle. Und ich glaube, das es eine der kompliziertesten, koordinierten Arbeitsformern ist, wenn z. Bsp. 20 Autoren eine konsistente Geschichte über 6 Staffeln a 15 Folgen erzählen. Jede Folge hat dabei einen Spannungsbogen, Drehungen und Wendungen, wiedererkennbare Charaktere, authentische Emotionen, Überraschungen und am Ende immer einen Cliffhanger, der dafür sorgt, dass wir am Schirm bleiben zum Binge Watching oder eben nächste Woche wieder einschalten. Wir wissen ein bisschen darüber wie das funktioniert und es muss ein schmaler Grad zwischen Kooperation, Planung und Kreativität und Delegation sein, der da beschritten wird. Wer ganz viel dazu weiss und überhaupt darüber, wie Story Telling funktioniert und wie wir es einsetzen können ist Christian Riedel, der Gründer von Growth by Story. Christian ist mein Gast in dieser 18. Folge von Stories Connecting Dots. Christian hilft Firmen dabei, Story Telling gezielt zur Verbesserung interner Kommunikation, Alignment innerhalb der Firma und

Ep. 17: Courtney Hemphill - Psychological Safety at Work I met Courtney years ago at the Lean UX conference. At the time there was a lot of talk of yet another round of inclusion. Where DevOps was going on in one part of the universe, this was the universe, we were talking and discussing inclusion of UX, User Research, Design and other disciplines into what we called agile. Each inclusion brings its own challenges as it takes us away from the trodden path. And somehow, all of these movements attract Courtney. Courtney is all about inclusion. And what all of these movements have in common is also the need for psychological safety. a safe place to be able to try out how we can better work together - coming from all our nice, little, funny, sometimes highly culturally coded environments and all of a sudden be a team. Courtney has a coding background but now is managing big efforts at and with clients to build digital products, but much help clients embrace the challenges of the digital change that is before us.

  I don’t really dare to introduce Roman. He is such a big name in Agile Product Management. Since his beginnings in Scrum, he was totally focused: Scrum it will be, Product it will be - and everything that belongs to it. No more, no less. Clarity. In the field of Agile Product Management, he is really known for his great Scrum Product Owner courses, but also his books. His latest book is called Strategize and is all about product strategy. Unlike with many other books on strategy, what Roman accomplishes with his book, is to get the topic out of the vague. He gives clear cut advice in an otherwise often blurry topic. Knowing Roman for many years, it actually took me until this interview to actually decode one of his main qualities: Calm and certainty. Roman, in the best sense, gives you the clarity and certainty you expect from a teacher. While many teachers may bring you to the brink of doubt, Roman in a very calm, distinct and respectful way tells you what he found out to be the core of any topic he writ

Fridtjof „Fridel“ Detzner hat die letzten 18 Jahre mit seinen Freunden daran gearbeitet von einem Bauernhof aus die Voraussetzungen für Jimdo zu schaffen und dann Jimdo mit aufgebaut. Dort hilft er auch noch ein bisschen mit, er sucht aber nach neuen Feldern. Fridtjof „Fridel“ Detzner hat die letzten 18 Jahre mit seinen Freunden daran gearbeitet von einem Bauernhof aus die Voraussetzungen für Jimdo zu schaffen und dann Jimdo mitkönnen aufgebaut. Dort hilft er auch noch ein bisschen mit, er sucht aber nach neuen Feldern. Darum hat Fridel ein Jahr hinter sich, dass anders war als anderen vorher. Er ist mit einem Fernsehteam durch die Welt gereist um für die Serie Founders Valley zu drehen. Sie wird weltweit ausgestrahlt und Du kannst sie auch auf youtube anschauen. Dafür ist das Team monatelang durch die Welt gefahren. In anderen Kulturen und Kontexten wurde geschaut, was „Gründen“ dort bedeutet was Gründer dort antreibt welche Probleme Gründer und die Gesellschaft dort haben ob esMuster von Gemeinsamkeiten

Episode 14: Christopher Avery - The Responsibility Process   This episode is quiet. Quiet and deep. I am happy that Christopher Avery took the time and explained the Responsibility Process to us. I will let Christopher explain it in the podcast - the topic is complex, deep and sensitive. He's much better in this than I am. I think it is important to try to wrap your head around this model which might change your understanding of responsibility from a model of blame and shame to a model of freedom to choose and to be conscious. Some quotes from the podcast "We've been taught that to be a responsible person, you have to give up your impractical ambitions and do something more practical" "How are you?" is an awkward question for Europeans, we tend to answer. Here is Christopher's reply to the question: "How are you?" "I am free, powerful and at choice, thank you!" "Conscious choices on repetitive behaviour do have effect. Central ingredients to the Responsibility Process "Intention, Awareness and Confront!" Whi

Welcome to the first Episode of the second season of Stories Connecting Dots. Listen to Peter Bihr, telling the tale of Shenzhen, where hardware is software is hardware. And everything is hardware is software is hardware. And where cycle time is close to zero. Shenzhen is a place where you can go and order anything from ideation on your product to a 3D print in industry quality and all of that in days rather than weeks or months. "The future is already here, it is just not very evenly distributed" - William Gibson, of course, 1999 Listen to Peter help us understand what this means and what the consequences are. And what we can learn from it. As a side aspect, understand the role of WeChat in China and how a future of a platform-that-integrates-everything already exists.   Join us onto this little excursion into one of the futures that are already present. And not just as a Gibson-eqsue Blade-Runner-like-fantasy but in the real world and in cinemascope. References and background Peter's written report on Shen

Peter Bihr - Ethics for the Internet of Things  I was thinking for a long time on the title of this episode. No one short title would be enough. Peter Bihr does so many things in so many flavours. If you live in Berlin you would need to live under a rock not to be aware of some of the things that Peter is part of. I am happy to know Peter since years and whenever we meet, we have these great conversations on whatever topic.  Peter, since ages, is writing about the impact of technology on society. His instincts brought him to the topic of ethics in the Internet of Things. That lead to getting to know the community around the Internet of Things, which again led to organising the first Thingscon in Berlin. An epic experience in starting a conference, low on budget, high on energy and even the attention of Bruce Sterling.  During the conversation, you will hear a lot about how Peter sees the world. And as I did not choose Peter by chance, you will hear a lot of things on how to start things off how to open thin

This time my guest is John Cutler. He is the hardest working man in product business. At least he is the hardest and most writing man in product business. since ages he writes, thinks and muses about things he observes and wonders about in what we see as our jobs in product work. John might actually really be one of the hardest working men in our business. On top of writing on a nearly daily basis, he has a plain normal day job. Well, what’s normal. He is Senior Product Manager for Search and Relevance at Zendesk. Asked how he gets all of this done, he says he needs it. He says, he accepts mediocrity in his writing to get anything done. That’s close to the things Denise said in the last podcast. What I really love about what John writes is his (in the best sense of the word) pragmatic and un-ideological view. I see this in many people who still have a day job. Not being connected to and being reliant on consulting and methods and marketing sometimes helps bring things to the point. Not only does John write a

Episode 10 Denise Jacobs This episode is on doing your best work and how creativity supports that. Really! My guest today is Denise Jacobs. Denise has her roots in Project Management and Software Development. Denise’ first book was a bestseller on CSS and she made a speaking career out that profession. But then, something happened, she got bored and was looking for a new challenge. Denise decided to become a public speaker and a „real“ book author on the topic of creativity. Until then, Denise spent years in teaching creativity techniques and exercises as well as giving keynotes on the topic. She discovered that there is an enemy to creativity in all of us: The inner critic. Following that insight, she focused on that topic and now, in June 2017, after years of research and practise, her new book will be published: „Banish your inner critic - Silence the Voice of Self-Doubt to unleash Creativity and do your best Work“ What I found extraordinary in this book is that it is not about some tree hugging might work

I am incredibly happy and proud to have Jan Chipchase as the guest of this show! I have followed Jan’s work and steps since years and years. Then, he was first the Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at frog and then Principal Scientist at Nokia. For me, it all started when I wanted to get deeper into understanding how I can learn about the clients that use my products. When guessing wasn’t enough and guessing how to get closer also wasn’t enough. I sucked up all the writing and presentations by Jan, that I could find in the Internet. For years, I (we!) had to guess how he is doing things and were impressed by his decisiveness and his uncompromised search for exploring the boundaries of what he (we) knows and how he approaches extending that knowledge through experiences. He pushed the boundaries of field research and goes to where the potential clients of his clients are: From the streets of Tokyo to the highlands of the Hindu Kush or small towns in Zimbabwe. He does that with what he calls Pop Up

Episode 8: Stefan Roock und Henning Wolf / it-agile und die Geschichte von Agil in Deutschland   Episode 8 ist für mich eine ganz besondere und sehr persönliche Folge. Und das hat mit den Gästen zu tun. Ich habe die Folge mit Stefan Roock und Henning Wolf in den wunderbaren Büros Ihrer weithin bekannten Firma it-agile am Hamburger Hafen aufgenommen. it-agile ist für mich die Firma für agile Kultur, Methoden, Techniken und Transitionen. Mit den beiden und ihrer Firma verbindet mich unglaublich viel: wir sind Kollegen, Partner und Freunde. Wir arbeiten zusammen, wir geben hie und da gemeinsam Trainings. Stefan und Henning haben aber als meine ehemaligen Coaches in der Transition von mobile.de einen unglaublichen Einfluß auf mich, meine Arbeit und meine Leben gehabt, der bis heute wirkt. Stefan hat mich - ein kleines Beispiel - zu meinen ersten Vorträgen überredet. Diese Folge ist vor allem ein entspanntes Gespräch über die Zeit von 1995 bis heute und über das was im agilen Umfeld so passiert ist. Es hat sich n