Stalin was a terrible Scrum Master (and other case studies)
Embark on a wild ride with us and grow your agile brains with this hand-picked set of real-world adventures! This edition is easily the most enjoyable so far — at least we think so.
Agile Matinée is a fortnightly dispatch curated by Panaxeo, one Agile topic at a time. We bribe five Agile enthusiasts with croissants and expect them to collect interesting and read-worthy content in return. This one is full of real life case studies!
We’ll trace an airline catastrophe back to mismanaged agility with two high-profile Agile sleuths, glue together a shattered leadership team aiming for an IPO, learn how five great facilitators engaged difficult audiences, discover parallels between the Starbucks service design and your Kanban board in JIRA. Lego bricks, formulas, and even Stalin — we were able to extract valuable agilist knowledge from the deepest corners to nurture your braincells.
“If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
— 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
01.
The perfect storm — What happened at Southwest?
(30-min video)
Southwest had to cancel 16,700 flights impacting more than 2 million passengers after its crew scheduling software failed to handle staffing changes in December 2023, sparking a federal investigation by USDOT.
Two renowned PSTs Ryan Rippley and Todd Miller did their own sleuthing through public sources. They traced the operational meltdown to the subpar alignment of vision, tools, and OKRs. All were introduced in SouthWest’s recent Agile transformation.
Regardless of the analysis’ actual accuracy (it’s an OSINT, after all), this is a great practical case study. There are many compelling arguments for Evidence-based management (over OKRs and SAFe measures) when seeking organizational alignment. (And preventing clusterfucks.)
Frankly, we’ve never seen anything like this before.
Go check it out.
02.
Leadership — Taming the deeply dysfunctional VPs
It’s dead and alive, thriving and horrendous, buzzing and deeply dysfunctional. A true Schrodinger’s fast-growing company.
Is there a way to fix it?
One of the most notorious leadership coaching case studies deals with a fictional, yet frighteningly real, corporation just like that. We follow one woman’s journey in turning an inherited shipwreck into a highly functional, goal-oriented team that reinvigorates the whole enterprise. One discussion and intervention at a time.
The book concludes with a chapter on the theoretical model used throughout the case study. You can apply it to pretty much any team you lead.
Patrick Lencioni’s masterpiece is a true leadership guide that improves with each read. Go read it yourself!
03.
Facilitation — 5 heart-warming stories from the trenches
(5-min read)
Rowena did something remarkable in her long-form LinkedIn post; she genuinely praised others — focusing on how their skill and wit transformed her career as a facilitator.
Each story highlights a different quality the facilitator was able to bring and apply at the right place and time:
Using what presents itself at the moment.
Making people seen.
The art of feedback.
Determination.
Connecting with others.
So, let’s take an example from Rowena: stop bragging and start expressing genuine gratitude. Top-shelf LinkedIn content.
04.
Flow or drip? — Kanban at Starbucks vs. Costa & why you should care
(6-min read)
Transferring observations from everyday experiences into software teams has always been a great source of pleasure for me.
Ash Moran looked at the Kanban-esque process in Starbucks. He went down the list and explained how each element increases predictability and flow and reduces variance.
Love or hate Starbucks, most of Ash’s observations are nicely transferrable to the world of building software, too.
Even though Ash’s company – Patchspace – has long been dissolved, he still keeps the blog up. We’ll raise a cup (of coffee) to that. Cheers, Ash!
05.
Whoosh! — How Scrum helped a Formula student team cross the finish line
(5-min read)
Scrum success stories in software development are always the same. Booooring! How about we switch to fast cars instead?
A 30-person team of university petrolheads dreamt of participating in a Formula competition. As if the goal itself wasn’t challenging enough, they had a ton of problems inside the team as well.
This short story shows how they, with the help of an Agile coach, got their construction process under control, learned to self-organize, improve trust, transparency, and all the other nice things you get when you let go of ad-hoc vertical structures and embody the principles of Scrum & Kanban.
Wroom, wroom!
06.
How LEGO got better by getting more Agile
(8-min read)
To give busy parents a break while making their kids smarter is a noble mission. But getting smarter about creating the playful and nurturing experience they are known for required Lego to rethink how they themselves operated.
Bosa walks us through core challenges, the adoption curve, organizational changes, and 3 Lego case studies. The organization found quite a bit of value in becoming Agile – in their collaboration, budgeting, and product focus.
07.
History meets Agile — How a Stalinist anti-Agile policy mortally warped the internal dynamics of an empire
(10-min read)
We fell in love with agility in part because it supports proper shared incentives for everyone involved. To drive our point home, we wanted proof of how an opposite approach can cause issues.
Boy, did we find one! “Issues” is an understatement – more like a colossal clusterfuck.
As CEE citizens, we were generally familiar with the planned economy of the once-hegemonic USSR. However, the deeply dysfunctional internal dynamics this antithesis of agility fuelled left us speechless. It is an excellent read and a very practical tale of caution for today’s leaders too.
Anyway, thanks, Stalin — had you known Agile, the USSR’s demise might not have happened.
Social Radar
Jeff Sutherland gets (rightfully) angry, calms down, and drops an enlightening explanation of the scientific roots of Scrum. Los Alamos played a role; that’s just a fun fact.
That’s it; we’re off.
Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now, go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!
Hasta la Agilista, baby!