Dean Chanter - Lean+Agile DC

Modern Agile stickers everywhere are helping Modern Agile
stick.  Dean Chanter of Capital One recalls his Accidental
Experiment with Modern Agile (cake for every release!).  Bob
and Dean talk through the power of the laptop sticker, evolving
and “upskilling” ScrumMasters, and Lean roots.


 


Transcript


Bob Payne: [00:00:05] Hi I'm your host Bob Payne
and i'm here with Dean Chanter and Dean you're from, You're at
Cap One.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:00:11] Yeah, Currently at Cap
One.


 


Bob Payne: [00:00:14] You're doing some work
with scaled Agile and you're saying you sort of accidentally
started applying Modern Agile. I'm super curious about that
journey.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:00:25] I did it was very
interesting so I joined Capital One about seven months ago, was
with Intel for about 13 years before that, and when I first got
to Capital One everybody had a Modern Agile sticker on their
laptop there was actually a bunch on my desk. So I just slapped
one on my laptop. I had heard about it before I got the Capital
One but Intel was a big SAFehouse and so that was kind of how we
did things there and made a lot of sense and so, maybe three or
four months ago, my gallbladder decided that it no longer needed
to be in my body and so's listening to Josh's podcast and listen
to things and he and John Cutler were talking.


 


Bob Payne: [00:01:02] Okay, yeah I've had Josh
on my podcast.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:01:04] Yeah. So Josh asked
John -he's like What do you think about Modern Agile. What do you
mean to you. And John was like you know what. It really makes me
feel like we can try anything and we don't have to stick to one
framework another. And I realized then that some of the things I
have been doing it kept on with my teams was just that right. I
had a lot of teams that were Scrum Teams and Kanban teams and we
had ARTs so we had you know single teams but they needed... They
were looking for a refresh right.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:01:37] You know some new ways
of thinking about things that we brought in things like product
discovery. We started looking at cycle time. Right. We just we
started celebrating everything. Right. We had cake for every
release we had you know just how.


 


Bob Payne: [00:01:54] Dangerous when you're a
real DevOps...


 


Dean Chanter: [00:01:56] Exactly. Exactly. Well
that was one of the things we went from releases that were on
average and they say average because it wasn't a true cadence of
about six to eight weeks. We're now releasing twice a week. OK.
You know just because of trying to setting audacious goals right.
Right. Using that we want to really use more frequently. Right.
And once we set that goal we started working through the
different things and different challenges that it takes to get
through. We actually even if we don't have content for release on
a particular day that we're supposed to be released, we'll still
do the release. The reason is is because it allows us to go
through those motions right and should identify more ways to we
found things by doing that that maybe we should leave - blue
green releases right. So maybe we should leave green up a little
bit longer so we could fail back if we need to. Eventually, you
know the goal there is eventually getting to where we could do
continuous delivery if we wanted to.


 


Bob Payne: [00:02:56] Yeah. That's great. So I'm
so curious how you got the big batch of stickers. Did Josh come
to CapOne and.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:03:03] He did.


 


Bob Payne: [00:03:04] Okay.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:03:05] So Josh came to camp
while he was a keynote speaker. CapOne does a technology agile
conference internally once a year.


 


Bob Payne: [00:03:13] I've spoken that years
back yeah.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:03:15] I wasn't there for that
yet but that's how the stickers ended up on my desk. So.


 


Bob Payne: [00:03:21] Yeah I have been doing a
series of of of talks using modern agile as a sort of framework
to look at Lean and depending on where I go and how how I either
call it. "No one gives a shit about your practices" or
"disrupting the cult of the cult of practices". I'm a scrum
trainer but fundamentally believe that scrum is a starting place
and the goal is not to like do scrum. The goal is to get into
this. You know this idea of experimentation learning and changing
and and so you know I was an old XP extreme programmer guy. So
you know I've known Josh for a long time and you know that talk
really. It was actually that sticker was the deflowering force..
It's probably not appropriate to say but I had always had Virgin
Macs with no stickers on them until that one made it on my last
Mac.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:04:31] That was the first
sticker I put on my cowpat on issue laptops. Have it if you have
a habit of putting stickers on stuff for me is like yeah I'm
fine. I agree. I agree. You know that's actually one of the
things so I do manage a group of Scrum Masters right, and
ScrumMaster is fhe title that Capital One gives them you know I
looked at, look at them more than just that, right? They're team
coaches, I've got a couple that work as a scaled coach right? As
well, and so-


 


Dean Chanter: [00:05:05] That was one of the
things that we spent a day together back in March you know kind
of strategizing you know our improvement areas that we wanted to
go with the team right. And so that's one of the things that I
mentioned to them right is that you know if you look at it from
that Modern Agile lens you know then I'm asking you to balance
that coaching and the delivery right and ,. And one of the things
we talked about is like sometimes as you know agile coaches all
too often want to wait for that big moment and that big huge
coaching opportunity, that next retro or their next delivery,
right? So one of the things I talk to them about is sometimes
coaching in the moment and being a player with your teams is
actually the best opportunity for that coaching moment. I
actually got one of my Scrum Masters now who is actually a
performer on the release. So since we've got teams that are
applying good DevOps practices right the teams are the performers
on the release and so she's actually the performer. What.. and
the reason for that is that it allows him to have an extra person
separation of duties or his since she's not coding that she can
have that access to that prod environment. But it's a lot harder
to identify a lot of areas of waste that the teams were seeing
because she's got that different lens.


 


Bob Payne: [00:06:20] And when you get when you
get even further down the dev ops path you'll be able to deploy
without access to prod.


 


Bob Payne: [00:06:27] Exactly. Have an
auditable..


 


Dean Chanter: [00:06:33] Yes. That is the goal.


 


Bob Payne: [00:06:35] Yeah.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:06:36] But in the meantime
it's allowed the ScrumMaster to provide value in ways that they
haven't in the past.


 


Bob Payne: [00:06:43] Right, You know just you
know I like to poke at stuff. It's kind of what I do.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:06:50] Oh yeah.


 


Bob Payne: [00:06:52] So you were working with.
Well my friend Beth Wong.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:06:58] Yes. So that's another
interesting thing. So Beth and I are actually kind of paired
together with the teams that we're working with. OK so where I'm
providing that more tactical delivery focused management of the
scrummasters, Beth is actually paired with me as a true coach.
Right. And so she doesn't have that accountability to the
product. And so she she and I are able to do things that having a
single RTE in a scaling house wouldn't be able to do. So Beth is
able to run workshops and you know she was able to bring in
someone and worked with them and that's how we started our lean
product discovery is because I was able to stay focused and she
was able to coordinate those types of workshops. Another thing
that Beth is is able to do. She's actually run in a technical
coach and so that's one of the ways that we're accelerating that
automated release goal that we have for this.


 


Bob Payne: [00:08:00] Yeah. Yeah. I loved
working with Beth and I know she's she's excited to be the guys
now.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:08:05] So yes it's a great
partnership.


 


Bob Payne: [00:08:08] Yeah. Super. So what else
is exciting for you lately?


 


Dean Chanter: [00:08:13] I mean definitely as
we're evolving you know our scrum masters you know and what we
call upskilling them. Right.


 


Bob Payne: [00:08:21] So we've got some folks on
my team that you knew six seven years ago as CapitalOne went
through its original agile journey right went to see some class
and you know they're great at following those rules.


 


Bob Payne: [00:08:35] You probably are not aware
of. In 2005 they started a huge agile journey.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:08:43] I've heard that.


 


Bob Payne: [00:08:44] It's been swept out and
then.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:08:46] Exactly as a multiple
and in depending on what Capital One is a large organization
depending.


 


Bob Payne: [00:08:52] Are we talking card?


 


Dean Chanter: [00:08:53] So I'm in card, right.
Exactly. So different journeys there but the teams I've been
working with I've been five or six years is kind of about as far
as they can look back.


 


Bob Payne: [00:09:05] Right.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:09:05] And so again kind of
going back to that me asking my team to be that more player
coach. So we're looking at different ways of kind of seeing the
way the teams work right. Right now they're working through Mary
Poppendick's original book.


 


Bob Payne: [00:09:22] Yeah.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:09:23] Right. So one of the
interesting things about me and my journey started with Intel and
so Intel being also not only a product development team but also
a manufacturing to Jamie Flinchbaugh in the intel years and years
ago long before I started there.


 


Bob Payne: [00:09:40] Right right.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:09:40] And turn into a lean
house.


 


Bob Payne: [00:09:42] Right.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:09:42] And so


 


Bob Payne: [00:09:44] Lean manufacturing. It's
always ironic to me that many of the organizations that do really
amazing lean logistics are lean manufacturing and I'm not saying
this about Intel because I don't actually have firsthand
knowledge. They look at agile they're like you know we can't do
that. That's not it's not you know it is really ironic that it is
they do have the same same roots.


 


Bob Payne: [00:10:10] You know clearly
manufacturing is a different is a different thing than product
development.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:10:18] Right.


 


Bob Payne: [00:10:19] And. But but lean product
development has also been around for you know almost 75 years.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:10:27] Exactly. So and that's
where my journey started right. Is is in then so. It's almost
like if you talk to the folks at Toyota about Lean manufacturing
right now. What is lean? this is jus t what I do. So, at Intel,
for me that's what it was right. You know I.


 


Bob Payne: [00:10:43] They don't fetishize lean
in the way that scrum teams fetishize Scrum.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:10:47] They don't.


 


Bob Payne: [00:10:53] My Precious Scrum.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:10:53] Exactly. Exactly. And
so you know I you know we you know when I was running a team.


 


Bob Payne: [00:10:57] I'm the agile golem.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:10:59] yeah yeah yeah exactly.
So when I was running at my first team team ride of developers
and we had daily stand ups and we committed to you know we
committed to the goal for that day and the next day we talked
about you know how we go towards that goal right. Even if we were
working on a bug right. We didn't commit to finishing the bug. We
committed to the experiments that we were going to run that day.
Right. So when I transitioned to Agile you know it just kind of
made sense for me right now come in the CapitalOne that I think
it's kind of flipping the coin. I feel like that's a lot of the
things that we're working through as a team evangelist. At least
in my area is bringing some of those thought patterns.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:11:41] Identifying the waste
and running experiments right and less about any one particular
process or and other. Metrics is another thing that we are
bringing and doing which has been very interesting as well.


 


Bob Payne: [00:11:55] Cool experiment to learn
rapidly.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:11:57] Absolutely.


 


Bob Payne: [00:12:00] And in fact the only one I
have a little trouble explaining to executives is the make people
awesome, because they don't care. Many of them don't. If they
could go to the boards and saying yes we're we're we're we're
selling the customer crap, we're torturing people and we've got
higher revenues you know.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:12:25] And that's definitely a
shame but.


 


Bob Payne: [00:12:27] It is. It is. But I've
I've enjoyed I've enjoyed you know Josh's poke in the eye and you
know I think it's going to stick.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:12:41] I think so too.


 


Bob Payne: [00:12:42] Yeah because it's a
sticker because he often makes a joke how do you make. How do you
make an idea stick? Turn it into a sticker.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:12:50] Turn it into a sticker
I haven't heard him say that but I like that. Well I like what
he's been saying lately. right. He was at LeanAgile US in
February and I got a chance to see his keynote there right. He
opened the keynote. Are you curious as I say that's what I took
back to my team. Right. You know are we curious? You know and
another one of the things he said there is I know have you
identified a ceremony or practice on your team and just gotten
rid of it to see what would happen. Right. And that's another one
of the challenges that I gave to my team as well.


 


Bob Payne: [00:13:24] Yeah I mean you know
Toyota doesn't.. They'll throw stuff out left and right that you
know. Lean is the machine that eats itself to make itself better.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:13:37] Yes.


 


Bob Payne: [00:13:37] And I don't think Agile is
there yet but that's that's one of my goals. So I really love you
know he framed it in a way that pulled together many of the
thoughts and conversations a lot of us had been having. And so
I'm happy to carry that torch for him for a little while.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:13:58] I almost kind of I
don't know if it came on the cusp of or maybe there has something
to do with it but I feel like a lot of the fights that you see
you know on Twitter or blog spaces you know around Scrum vs
Kanban, estimates or not... I feel like a lot of that has calmed
down recently. I don't know if it's if there's a correlation
there. But at least for me that's what I see.


 


Bob Payne: [00:14:25] I think there's more
correlation than causation would be my guess. I think people are
just worried about you know foreign policy being run on Twitter.
So no estimates or mob programming thing is just..it's like Oh my
God I can't believe we were arguing about that stuff.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:14:40] Yeah maybe.


 


Bob Payne: [00:14:46] So thank you very much for
coming in and appreciate it and hope you have a great talk.


 


Dean Chanter: [00:14:52] Yes. It was fun.


 


Bob Payne: [00:14:53] Great.