Chris Williams: I tell you a little bit about what agile has done for me? That's this
Chris Williams: week on the Badass Agile podcast.
Chris Williams: Greetings, team. Welcome to the Badass Ass Agile podcast. I'm
Chris Williams: your host, Chris Williams.
Chris Williams: Welcome back, my friend. Good to see you. A few years ago, I did an
Chris Williams: episode called what agile has done for me, and I wanna
Chris Williams: revisit it because I think it's changed. Over the past few years,
Chris Williams: the gift of being agile and doing agile stuff out there in the
Chris Williams: industry has completely changed my career, and I wanna share it with you. But first,
Chris Williams: let's take a moment to remember why we're here. To create an elite
Chris Williams: tribe of leaders who truly serve their clients and communities by
Chris Williams: doing what matters and what works, relentlessly chasing
Chris Williams: value and excellence like a badass. There's so many
Chris Williams: resources out there about what you need to do to be agile, but
Chris Williams: we focus on who you need to become in order to
Chris Williams: lead teams. So let's hammer down those fundamentals to create a
Chris Williams: truly unique and powerful force in this industry. And
Chris Williams: remember, if this helps you, share this episode with your
Chris Williams: friends. When I think about what agile has taught me, now that I
Chris Williams: don't do real development team stuff anymore, I think
Chris Williams: about all the things that it's allowed me to bring into my personal
Chris Williams: life in development, but also equally important to the business
Chris Williams: that I run. So it's worth showcasing. What did it create for me?
Chris Williams: What did it do? What did I learn? Why does that matter? Did it open
Chris Williams: doors for me? What was this whole apprenticeship for over
Chris Williams: the past almost 20 years? What did I walk away with? Those are great
Chris Williams: questions to ask because I think in a time where you're wondering where did my
Chris Williams: agile career go? What are we supposed to do next? This could be
Chris Williams: valuable for you too if you're willing to look at it in a similar way.
Chris Williams: So first, it taught me what a business does
Chris Williams: and some of the best ways for a business to make money. Most
Chris Williams: importantly, I learned that no matter what a business does,
Chris Williams: there are 2 primary objectives in mind. One is to make money, where the
Chris Williams: business that doesn't make money is called a charity, and you have to decide whether
Chris Williams: you're working for a business or whether you're creating your own, how you're gonna help
Chris Williams: the business do that. And the second thing you need to realize is that all
Chris Williams: money is generated when you create value, when you solve a valuable
Chris Williams: problem for some kind of customer. And that leads me to the second
Chris Williams: thing that it taught me. It showed me the human side of business
Chris Williams: and product, and taught me to put the user's need, whether that's a
Chris Williams: pain or whether it's a desire. Ahead of all the other
Chris Williams: smart people in an organization who think they know what the product
Chris Williams: should be or do. Here's a problem we face as Agilist. Tell me
Chris Williams: if this is true for you. If you work for a company, but you're not
Chris Williams: working on their core product, just something ancillary that
Chris Williams: supports the product, so think of a bank, The core product is probably not
Chris Williams: the software that you make, but even if you make the software that drives the
Chris Williams: online banking app, that is secondary to their
Chris Williams: core business. Whether that's collecting funds on deposit, or making
Chris Williams: money on the interest on loans, whatever it may be, what you
Chris Williams: do is not the core product. So oftentimes when we
Chris Williams: make product, we fail to ask the question, what does this need to be
Chris Williams: for you? How can we solve an important problem for you? How could this
Chris Williams: make your life easier? And we spend more time working on the features that
Chris Williams: we internally think that the customer might want or might
Chris Williams: value with little or no proof that they actually
Chris Williams: do. Problem gets worse when the customer never directly pays for
Chris Williams: this product. So by being agile and working in all different kinds of
Chris Williams: projects and conditions, you learn that unless you have
Chris Williams: that core customer value, the thing that they most desire, the
Chris Williams: pain that they most desperately want to make go away,
Chris Williams: that needs to be your focus. And how you research and how you talk to
Chris Williams: the customer and how you make decisions will be forever changed
Chris Williams: if you take that knowledge to heart. Again, related to this, it taught me that
Chris Williams: a lot of the things that we build are not valuable. And
Chris Williams: so we can always improve the value that we bring to the people
Chris Williams: who hire us or the customers that we chase and attract by, once
Chris Williams: again, focusing on those things. And the final thing
Chris Williams: that Agile taught me that's so so important is not to play by the rule
Chris Williams: book. A lot of people in my industry, a lot of people that I work
Chris Williams: with are super concerned with meeting the expectations of the
Chris Williams: agile bible or the employee handbook. And that was probably the
Chris Williams: biggest breakthrough for me Because the truth is that
Chris Williams: what spoiled agile is mediocrity. Those who
Chris Williams: tempt us with a steady paycheck in a process
Chris Williams: controlled scaled environment, when really the most important
Chris Williams: lesson that agile should be teaching us is to take controlled
Chris Williams: risk, flop on your belly, fail. Don't let
Chris Williams: certainty and the desire for safety spoil
Chris Williams: this excitement, this excellent skill that you now
Chris Williams: have. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Agile works best in
Chris Williams: environments where we have never done this thing before. We don't know
Chris Williams: how to get to an outcome because we've never gotten it in the past.
Chris Williams: We're gonna experiment our way to greater knowledge, more learning, and
Chris Williams: more certainty. But if we use agile as a process
Chris Williams: control, as a way to manage projects and deliver more
Chris Williams: certainty, we're gonna struggle. If certainty were
Chris Williams: available in those kinds of projects, you wouldn't need agile. What
Chris Williams: we're after is not delivery certainty, but something completely
Chris Williams: different. And you could make a difference.
Chris Williams: You could go boldly. You could stop giving your time to people who
Chris Williams: don't understand or want agile or your agile
Chris Williams: skill, all they really want is your labor, your time by the
Chris Williams: hour, your conformity, your compliance to
Chris Williams: process. And for me, this knowledge, this observation
Chris Williams: changed my life. Because I was able to start a business and interact with
Chris Williams: customers and deliver a service that is not about
Chris Williams: glorified project management or budget management, but
Chris Williams: instead to truly help people innovate and to delight and
Chris Williams: impact customers as directly as possible. So what did I do
Chris Williams: and what could you do with all of this learning? Number 1, I've said
Chris Williams: this before. You could use these skills to create your own side hustle.
Chris Williams: Build something. A lot of people who graduated the forge took this
Chris Williams: knowledge to go and build a business for themselves. Now
Chris Williams: if entrepreneurship doesn't appeal to you, then make your side hustle
Chris Williams: something inside the organization. Be an intrepreneur.
Chris Williams: Find ways to create new value elsewhere in the organization, and I talk
Chris Williams: an awful lot about how to do that for non
Chris Williams: technical departments or divisions. Or you could go somewhere right straight
Chris Williams: down the middle. Keep your day job while you work on something that you
Chris Williams: have a hunch can make a difference in the world, can make a dent.
Chris Williams: Maybe it wouldn't change the world, but it would just make the world a whole
Chris Williams: lot more fun for a certain group of people. What group of
Chris Williams: people? People just like you. People who
Chris Williams: love what you love. People who like what you like. People who think the way
Chris Williams: that you think. Never underestimate the power of
Chris Williams: helping the person that you used to be. Tim
Chris Williams: Ferris sometimes says scratch your own itch, which means build the
Chris Williams: product that you yourself wish you had. You don't have to have a
Chris Williams: 1000000 customers to create a super successful business, and you
Chris Williams: don't have to quit your day job to run one either. Now whether you work
Chris Williams: for yourself or you work for somebody else, you could use this knowledge
Chris Williams: to make your own products or services better by focusing on the
Chris Williams: customer and what they want. Now you have to start asking questions.
Chris Williams: Now you have to do your research. Now you have to think about things that
Chris Williams: product people have to think about, demographics, psychographics.
Chris Williams: What causes people to buy? What language do they use? How do they
Chris Williams: talk to each other? What do they wanna hear? If you do this, if nothing
Chris Williams: else, you could help guide product owners to making better decisions
Chris Williams: and better priorities based on real customer feedback
Chris Williams: and real knowledge of the people that you serve. And look, at the very
Chris Williams: least, you could use these skills to create a unique
Chris Williams: perspective or voice. If you refuse to play by the
Chris Williams: rule book, if you refuse to do corporate zombie
Chris Williams: agile, you could start saying things that help other
Chris Williams: teams do better and be better. A fresh perspective,
Chris Williams: Some people have never heard of or thought about before. You'd be
Chris Williams: surprised. The extent to which an outlier, somebody
Chris Williams: who says something that doesn't normally get said, can create not
Chris Williams: only attention and by the way, attention translates
Chris Williams: directly to income, to revenue, but also to elevate the craft.
Chris Williams: Hey. We're in need of that right now. I've said many times that agility is
Chris Williams: struggling because we've broken trust. We don't add value the way that we were supposed
Chris Williams: to, the way that we wanted to. So if you got something to say about
Chris Williams: it, say it. Here's something else that I think these learnings can
Chris Williams: do. Certainly did it for me. Teach yourself to challenge
Chris Williams: yourself. Push your limits. Find out what you're
Chris Williams: capable of. If you do any of these things, if you break the rules, if
Chris Williams: you focus more on customers, if you're determined to add more value
Chris Williams: to an organization or your own business, you're
Chris Williams: learning to do something that's very important. How do you capitalize on
Chris Williams: opportunities? If you have agile skill,
Chris Williams: this is the next level stuff. We're supposed to be helping
Chris Williams: companies innovate. We're supposed to be helping them pivot
Chris Williams: and respond to market challenges as they come up. So show a
Chris Williams: business that you know how to do that, that you know how to capitalize on
Chris Williams: a market opportunity. Hit that need first and
Chris Williams: fast, and you'll be helping your customers whether you're
Chris Williams: consulting for a bank, working full time for an insurance company,
Chris Williams: or creating products and services for your own market. If you do
Chris Williams: that for them, they'll trust you. They'll learn to lean on
Chris Williams: you, to rely on you. And if you do it well, they'll want you to
Chris Williams: keep coming back. I think that making dev teams more
Chris Williams: efficient is not a visionary job. And so if agile
Chris Williams: has grabbed hold of you too, and you want more of the promise and
Chris Williams: more of the passion, then these are the kinds of things you might wanna
Chris Williams: know. Not only you can chase, but they can be profitable,
Chris Williams: prosperous, and highly fulfilling. What I love most about this is that
Chris Williams: when I was a kid, before being honest, I was never really pushed that hard.
Chris Williams: And so I developed this bad habit of thinking that things would be okay,
Chris Williams: opportunities would just come to me and I never learned how to stretch and
Chris Williams: take whatever talent I had, whatever knowledge I had built and
Chris Williams: try to create something bigger. And Agile gave me that. It
Chris Williams: forced me to look at the behaviors and mindsets that I held
Chris Williams: that caused me to doubt myself and to fight to
Chris Williams: overcome them. And when you overcome something like
Chris Williams: that and you become unstoppable, you become limitless.
Chris Williams: World feels like a playground, and life's a lot more fun.
Chris Williams: See in the beginning, Agile was in demand. So I had a healthy income, a
Chris Williams: reliable career, and a decent amount of demand just
Chris Williams: because Agile was in vogue. But later, it became obvious that I
Chris Williams: had something to say, and I trusted myself to make this
Chris Williams: show and to find you all so that we could talk about it
Chris Williams: together, and if I've opened your eyes to some opportunities,
Chris Williams: if I've given you insight into how to be more successful with the tools
Chris Williams: and the knowledge that we've got, then damn. I've done a great
Chris Williams: thing, and I built it myself. I learned to make it
Chris Williams: profitable. I created my own economy, my own industry, and
Chris Williams: the doubt by the way never fully goes away. Sometimes I
Chris Williams: think, uh-oh. I'm sliding backwards because interest in
Chris Williams: agile might be waning or it's all been said before. But I know it
Chris Williams: in my heart that I can never go back to employee thinking.
Chris Williams: I can never go back to people pleasing. Because when you do
Chris Williams: that, you're taking that full time job or that contract, and you're
Chris Williams: agreeing to a point to sell off your soul, to sell off your
Chris Williams: passion, to co opt and borrow against your life blood,
Chris Williams: to create something that's only good if it passes the
Chris Williams: approval of some bigger authority. And I feel like most of the
Chris Williams: people who listen to the show want something more.
Chris Williams: So think about what Agile has done for you, and think about how can
Chris Williams: we use that now to do something amazing, something
Chris Williams: that's not in the playbook inside your company,
Chris Williams: outside of any one company, with your own customers,
Chris Williams: with your own products and services? What could it be? Well, the truth
Chris Williams: is it could be anything, and that's what Agile gave me.
Chris Williams: And I remember that forever, and I'm grateful forever. Hope
Chris Williams: this one inspired you. You can find me as always at badassagile.com.
Chris Williams: Don't forget to check out the forge and my other products and services. Links
Chris Williams: are all in the show notes below. I appreciate you. I look forward to seeing
Chris Williams: you next time, and until then, stay badass.