Notes

Chapter 1

1. Scott Kirsner, “The Barriers Big Companies Face When They Try to Act Like Lean Startups,” Harvard Business Review, August 16, 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/08/the-barriers-big-companies-face-when-they-try-to-act-like-lean-startups.

2. Eric Ries, The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth (New York: Currency, 2017).

3. Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org/.

4. Annual State of Agile Report, https://www.stateofagile.com/.

5. Agile Alliance, Experience Reports, https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/experience-reports/.

6. The origins of the DevOps movement are an inspiring read about grassroots disruption. The full story is available at https://theagileadmin.com/what-is-devops/.

7. Imarc Group, “DevOps Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2019–2024,” https://www.imarcgroup.com/devops-market.

8. 2014 State of DevOps Report, https://puppet.com/resources/whitepaper/2014-state-devops-report.

9. Prosci, Change Management and Agile Report, https://store.prosci.com/change-management-agile-report.html.

10. 2018 State of DevOps Report, https://puppet.com/resources/report/2018-state-devops-report/.

11. The Coding Gnome, “Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility),” March 4, 2014, https://pragdave.me/blog/2014/03/04/time-to-kill-agile.html.

12. Steve Blank, “Is the Lean Startup Dead?” September 5, 2018, https://steveblank.com/2018/09/05/is-the-lean-startup-dead/.

13. See this great rebuttal from the innovation firm Strategyzer: Tendayi Viki, “Lean Startup Is Dead—Long Live Lean Startup,” March 19, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tendayiviki/2017/03/19/lean-startup-is-dead-long-live-lean-startup/.

14. For the most vocal examples, see Ron Jeffries’s blog series on “Dark Scrum,” https://ronjeffries.com/categories/dark-scrum/; Martin Fowler’s keynote about the agile industrial complex, https://martinfowler.com/articles/agile-aus-2018.html; and the FansOfLess.com community protest.

15. Steve Blank, “Why GE’s Jeff Immelt Lost His Job—Disruption and Activist Investors,” November 1, 2017, https://steveblank.com/2017/11/01/why-ges-jeff-immelt-lost-his-job-disruption-and-activist-investors/.

16. Forbes Insights and Scrum Alliance, “The Elusive Agile Enterprise: How the Right Leadership Mindset, Workforce and Culture Can Transform Your Organization,” 2018, https://www.scrumalliance.org/ScrumRedesignDEVSite/media/Forbes-Media/ScrumAlliance_REPORT_FINAL-WEB.pdf.

17. For the detailed analysis, go to our free resources at the book website, UntappedAgility.com.

Chapter 2

1. Even if you’ve practiced Scrum in the past, I strongly recommend you read the official description. It contains aspirational values and practices that most don’t know about. Check it out here: https://scrumguides.org/.

2. Personal interview, May 31, 2019.

3. Jeffrey M. Hiatt, ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and Our Community (Loveland, CO: Prosci, 2006).

4. Kotter, “8-Step Process for Leading Change,” https://www.kotterinc.com/8-steps-process-for-leading-change/.

5. Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (New York: Broadway, 2010).

6. Simon Sinek, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” TED talk, September 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.

7. Gerald Zaltman, “The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer (and How to Reach It),” https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-subconscious-mind-of-the-consumer-and-how-to-reach-it.

8. Rick Rieder, “Tech Adoption Rates Have Reached Dizzying Heights,” Market Realist, December 24, 2015, https://marketrealist.com/2015/12/adoption-rates-dizzying-heights/.

9. CIPD, Megatrends, https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/work/trends/megatrends.

10. Michael Sheetz, “Technology Killing Off Corporate America: Average Life Span of Companies Under 20 Years,” CNBS, August 24, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/technology-killing-off-corporations-average-lifespan-of-company-under-20-years.html.

11. Scott D. Anthony, S. Patrick Viguerie, Evan I. Schwartz, and John Van Landeghem, Innosight, 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast: Creative Destruction Is Accelerating, https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/.

12. Kim Gerard, “It’s Not Nagging: Why Persistent, Redundant Communication Works,” Working Knowledge, April 18, 2011, https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/its-not-nagging-why-persistent-redundant-communication-works.

13. My favorite family of assessment tools is at https://ComparativeAgility.com. It’s a commercial product, but it’s completely free to those who hold certain certifications from the Scrum Alliance.

Chapter 3

1. Robin Dymond, Twitter, March 12, 2018, https://twitter.com/robindymond/status/973292504815583233.

2. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Great Barrington, MA: North River, 1984).

3. Mike Cottmeyer, “The Secret to Organizational Agility,” https://www.leadingagile.com/2008/12/the-secret-to-organizational-agility/.

4. Accelerate State of DevOps 2019, https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/state-of-devops-2019.pdf.

5. Accelerate State of DevOps 2019, https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/state-of-devops-2019.pdf.

6. 13th Annual State of Agile Report, https://www.stateofagile.com/#ufh-c-473508-state-of-agile-report.

7. Project Management Institute, “PMI Talent Triangle,” https://www.pmi.org/learning/training-development/talent-triangle.

8. Scott Berkun, The Year Without Pants (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013).

9. Laszlo Bock, Work Rules! (New York: Hachette, 2015).

10. Bernard Marr, “How Accenture and Deloitte Got Rid of Performance Reviews—and You Can Too,” LinkedIn, August 16, 2015, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-accenture-deloitte-got-rid-performance-reviews-you-bernard-marr/.

11. Scrum Alliance, “Scrum Alliance® Adds Chief ScrumMaster Melissa Boggs Alongside Chief Product Owner Howard Sublett,” January 22, 2019, https://medium.com/scrum-alliance/scrum-alliance-announces-chief-scrummaster-cf4be412a0dc.

12. Scrum Alliance, Unscripted, https://www.scrumalliance.org/unscripted.

Chapter 4

1. The Scrum Master role is defined in the Scrum framework. See https://scrumguides.org/.

2. 13th Annual State of Agile Report, https://www.stateofagile.com/#ufh-c-473508-state-of-agile-report.

3. Ian Bremmer, The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).

4. John Banmen, “The Satir Model: Yesterday and Today,” Contemporary Family Therapy 24, no. 1 (2002): 7–22, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1014365304082.

5. According to the 13th Annual State of Agile Report, the word “Scrum” and its variants (“Scrum/XP Hybrid” and “Scrumban”) are used by nearly three-fourths of all professionals in the agile movement.

6. “What Is ScrumBut?” https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-scrumbut.

7. The Clever PM, “Why ‘ScrumBut’ Shouldn’t Be a Bad Word,” June 8, 2017, http://www.cleverpm.com/2017/06/08/why-scrumbut-shouldnt-be-a-bad-word/.

8. Jurgen Appelo, “ScrumButs Are the Best Part of Scrum,” September 2, 2009, https://noop.nl/2009/09/scrumbuts-are-the-best-part-of-scrum.html.

9. L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around! (New York: Penguin, 2012).

10. Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 6th ed. (Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, 2017).

Chapter 5

1. 13th Annual State of Agile Report, https://www.stateofagile.com/#ufh-c-473508-state-of-agile-report.

2. 2019 Accelerate State of DevOps Report, https://cloud.google.com/devops/state-of-devops/.

3. Jeff Sutherland and J. J. Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (New York: Crown, 2014).

4. Personal interview, June 3, 2019.

5. Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen, Great by Choice (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).

6. Metered funding is explained in detail in Eric Ries, The Startup Way (New York: Currency, 2017).

7. The book Work Rules! details the many organizational experiments that Google has run. Laszlo Bock, Work Rules! (New York: Hachette, 2015).

8. Scaled Agile Framework, https://www.scaledagileframework.com/.

9. In a March 22, 2020, private interview with Scaled Agile Fellow: the planning iteration (25h) + four iteration plannings, standups, reviews, and retros (24h) + ongoing refinement (10h) = 59 out of 400 work hours = 15%. For a more detailed breakdown, go to the book website UntappedAgility.com.

10. Gartner Glossary, “Bimodal,” https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/bimodal.

11. Clint Boulton, “Why Digital Disruption Leaves No Room for Bimodal IT,” CIO, May 11, 2017, https://www.cio.com/article/3196037/why-digital-disruption-leaves-little-no-room-for-bimodal-it.html.

12. Agile Practice Guide (Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, 2017). Also available as a free download to Agile Alliance members (https://www.agilealliance.org/agile-practice-guide/) and PMI members (https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/practice-guides/agile).

13. William Ury, The Power of a Positive No (New York: Bantam, 2007).

Chapter 6

1. Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org.

2. Zappos aspires to be transparent about their Holacracy experiment on their website (https://www.zapposinsights.com/about/holacracy). But not everyone believes it was worth it: see Jennifer Reingold, “How a Radical Shift Left Zappos Reeling,” Fortune, March 4, 2016, http://fortune.com/zappos-tony-hsieh-holacracy/.

3. Craig described his reorg process in a 2015 speech in London, starting at 36:02, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phOCA3myNws.

4. Jeff Sutherland, Scott Downey, and Björn Granvik, “Shock Therapy: A Bootstrap for Hyper-Productive Scrum,” http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5261105/.

5. Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind, “Leadership Is a Conversation,” Harvard Business Review (March 2012), https://hbr.org/2012/06/leadership-is-a-conversation.

6. Brené Brown, Dare to Lead (New York: Random House, 2018).

7. Charles Duhigg, Power of Habit (New York: Random House, 2012).

8. Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure (Boston: Little, Brown, 2011).

9. Federal News Network, “OPM Director John Berry Promises Big Changes for Hiring, Retention, Retirement,” April 15, 2010, https://federalnewsradio.com/all-news/2010/04/opm-director-john-berry-promises-big-changes-for-hiring-retention-retirement/.

10. Richard Cheng and Bridget Dongarra, “Super Product Ownership: Creating and Scaling Product Ownership in the Federal Government,” https://agile2016.sched.com/event/6edL/super-product-ownership-creating-and-scaling-product-ownership-in-the-federal-government-richard-cheng-bridget-dongarra.

11. Kathryn Dill, “The Top 25 Companies that Will Let You Work from Home,” https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/31/the-top-25-companies-that-will-let-you-work-from-home.html.

12. Rita Gunther McGrath, “Failure Is a Gold Mine for India’s Tata,” Harvard Business Review, April 11, 2011.

Chapter 7

1. Personal interview, June 3, 2019.

2. To see the detailed analysis, go to the free resources on the book website, UntappedAgility.com.

3. Jeffrey M. Hiatt, ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and Our Community (Loveland, CO: Prosci, 2006).

4. Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams, Scaling Leadership (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019).

5. Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: James Fraser, 1841).

6. On his website, the theory’s co-creator Paul Hersey boasts over fourteen million leaders have been formally trained in the approach: https://situational.com/.

7. Robert J. House and Terence R. Mitchell, “Path-Goal Theory of Leadership,” April 1975, https://apps.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA009513.

8. Fred E. Fielder, A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness (New York: McGraw-Hill Series in Management, 1967).

9. Bernard Burnes, “Kurt Lewin and the Harwood Studies: The Foundations of OD,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 43, no. 2 (2007).

10. Daniel Goleman, “Leadership That Gets Results,” Harvard Business Review (March–April 2000), https://hbr.org/2000/03/leadership-that-gets-results.

11. Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams, Mastering Leadership (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2016).

12. Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs, Leadership Agility (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007).

13. Finding Mastery podcast, https://findingmastery.net/category/podcasts/.

14. “Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO,” Finding Mastery podcast, May 9, 2018, https://findingmastery.net/satya-nadella/.

15. Richard Branson, “What’s the Health of Your Success?” Virgin, May 17, 2017, https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/whats-health-your-success.

16. Joel Gascoigne, “My Morning Routine as a Remote CEO and Why It’s Always Changing,” podcast, https://open.buffer.com/morning-routine-remote-ceo/.

17. Andrew Merle, “This Is When Successful People Wake Up,” Huffington Post, July 17, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/this-is-when-successful-people-wake-up_b_596d17a3e4b0376db8b65a1a.

18. Michael Hyatt, “Hit the Ground Writing,” https://michaelhyatt.com/consistent-journaling/.

19. Catherine Clifford, “Bill Gates Took Solo ‘Think Weeks’ in a Cabin in the Woods—Why It’s a Great Strategy,” Make It, July 28, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/26/bill-gates-took-solo-think-weeks-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods.html.

20. Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach (New York: Alphabet, 2019).

21. Peter Bregman, “How to Ask for Feedback That Will Actually Help You,” Harvard Business Review, December 5, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/12/how-to-ask-for-feedback-that-will-actually-help-you.

22. Free templates are available at the book website, UntappedAgility.com.

Chapter 8

1. Jim Collins, Good to Great (New York: Harper Business, 2011).

2. “TEDxVictoria—Dave Morris: The Way of Improvisation,” YouTube, https://youtube.com/watch?v=MUO-pWJ0riQ.

3. Forrest Gump, directed by R. Zemeckis (Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures, 1994).

Chapter 9

1. Forty-one percent of respondents were either actively searching for a new job or planned to start in the coming year. https://www.fastcompany.com/3065845/why-nearly-half-of-workers-globally-could-leave-their-jobs-in-2017.