 Hello there to our full pint patrons and welcome to your exclusive prestigious pints pubcast episode what a mouthful that is so yes welcome back to another one of these very special exclusive episodes just for you our full pint subscribers thank you very much for your patronage this one is including myself and Jeff we went all the way to New Zealand well virtually to chat with an agile coach that goes back a long way with both of us that's Sandy Momoli so we talked about Sandy and how she got started with agile and very much what's going on on the other side of the world so it's great to catch up with people in a remote sense from anywhere in the world it's great to have a chat with Sandy so we hope you enjoy it just a reminder that you're still entitled to ask us a question through the ask the landlord chat function so make sure you use a check-in to patron to check that out and also coming up we've got a lock-in so keep your eyes peeled for our lock-in night for a drink with me and Jeff just a special lock-in only episode for you our patrons to come and share a pint or drink of your choice with us so we hope you enjoy this one it was a great chat here is Jeff and Paul the full episode uncut with Sandy Momoli we hope you enjoy hello Jeff hello mate how are you and hello Sandy cheers hello we're very lucky to have another guest on our prestigious pints pubcast that's a bit of a mouthful for a for a Tuesday night we're very very pleased to welcome another guest another prestigious pint with a with a guest all the way from I'm gonna say New Zealand am I right yes no oh yes yes see Jeff don't doubt me I thought you moved but yeah we're very pleased to have Sandy Momoli with us today he's gonna well just share a drink with us we've just discussed and we don't think we've well I've certainly not met a sandy in person so it's nice to meet virtually as well but we just thought we'd share a pint with you today um today or a drink with you at least but um yeah it's not a pint it's not a really broken tradition today I've got a um a stubby can of um a pink cider you a fan of cider sandy you desire a cider an English cider I do like a cider I also like English beer except for trashy list Jeff's the beer expert I just do cider and I've got a very limited palette so as far as I'm concerned it's this is like pink sweet apple juice so it's lovely but um orchard pig there we go what you got Jeff well my beer didn't arrive today I got a text this morning saying my beer was arriving but it hasn't I think it's been lost so for the first time ever on a podcast in over a hundred episodes I'm having a glass of wine a glass of vino oh yeah very nice so you're supposed to sweat it round right exactly and tell us how it tastes it looks like it looks more like Guinness it's very dark isn't it it's red wine yes I think it's a Malbec I think it's from South Africa that's kind of the the first criteria for me because the first time I really got talked to experience wine appreciate wine that's the word it was in South Africa so I'm kind of having a fit of an affinity but this is a Malbec it smells a bit like cherries I can't believe we've really gone so far as to start reviewing wines on this what was supposed to be a very boozy beery yeah I got told I got told my beers were going to be arriving today but I should be I prepare myself for how they look I got a message from the company because apparently there's a cardboard shortage in the UK because so many people are ordering stuff to be delivered to home but they're running out of cardboard so they packaged it I think they used some creatively that's never good is it so creatively I can't see it but yeah enough about me and my knuckle beer Sunday it's great to have you on so we this this series that we're doing we're trying to reach out to people who we have looked up to in the community over time that we've been involved in it and even though we've never really met we you and I worked together a long time ago on conference tracks and things like this and I've been very aware of you sometimes sort of being out there on your own if you like on the other side of the world with with not huge amounts of agile coaching community out there and you've been blazing a trail out there as far as I've been concerned for a long time but maybe I don't know do you see it that way not really I know have you heard of that thing called the internet and the lanes it's actually not you were you were kind of the first real proper agile coach on that side of the word that we were aware of yeah I was probably one of the one of the first or maybe single-handedly the very first but probably more one of a group of people where and it was around like 2007 2008 where I think agile coaching came up or developed worldwide and my impression was more it was happening all over the world and quite early on I met people because there was yet not many people were doing agile coaching or it wasn't even called agile coaching back then around the world and then there were a few people in the UK and a few people in the US and we all started talking to each other and I don't remember exactly what year it was that I heard of you and you wrote your book and we were on conference reviews track reviews 2012 13 around that yeah probably that's 10 years almost 10 years ago then yeah probably yeah so it's good to kind of meet your face to face yeah even though you get to drink wine so yeah what time is it for you there Sunday now wherever you are and it looks like from your camp from your background I'm gonna it looks like you're in an office and that isn't an office it's kind of a strange thing for me to be looking at now because I'm kind of forgotten what it looks like to be in an office this is geeky as it might be this is actually my home with my Kanban boards oh wow I'm just not at the office because it's so early in the morning it's eight o'clock I don't show up before 9 30 but I still go to the office basically every day and we I hope my personal experience was that we had like we had a five week lockdown in April and when it ended I just decided actually face to face is so much more fun and I don't want to do remote work and I'm super happy and feel really happy and lucky that I get to go to an office so is it backed I was gonna say normal but it's probably not normal by any stretch but is it does it feel is it normal yeah well I can't well I could but our borders are closed so you couldn't get into New Zealand if I left New Zealand it would take me months to get back apart from that I use a scanner after when I go or I scan in on my mobile phone we know I go to a restaurant but that's it is it so it's pretty I mean you're still aware of it and people are still tracking it I suppose but it's not stopping it's not locking down I think anything as far as the daddy yeah no and we don't have masks and we don't have social distancing or like we've got rugby matches with 40 000 people and I know you're suppressing me I feel like a dick saying that it seems like it's so far away for me right now that does that's for artists but yeah but I it's it's possible the end there is an end in the site I can be happy for you Sandy I can be happy for you you're a much better human being has it changed anything work wise significantly for for the companies out there um I think everyone has a plan B everyone has a business continuity plan that if we go into a lockdown like New Zealand has an elimination strategy so as soon as we got one case there's contact tracing sometimes then we would go into lockdown for like five cases if needed so everyone's aware this could happen tomorrow and so everyone has a contingency plan what to do and is able to switch immediately into home working I think lots of people have started mixing uh working from the office and working from home especially people who have a long commute they um there's a pattern of people being at the office very often three days a week working from home two days a week is that not really a thing before then not so much no actually no um yeah I my life is I go because I have to I have worked with two clients and I'm on site so two days with one and two days the other one so for me it's all office but most people I know and with my clients they do a three two combination some people do have four days at the office one day from home and I thought it would change much much more in the beginning we're all wow the world the world of work has totally changed and we're never going to go back to the old ways and we are so productive when we're working from home and um I've taught myself that story too but um I actually don't think so no I think and I'm glad in a way that that backs up my um because I'm feeling that at the moment that I'm I need to get back in front of people and I do miss that and it's kind of the reason that I got into agile in the first place that I do I'm a people person and I get my energy largely from from being in an office type environment and experience and being with brown people so I'm glad that I'm not the only one in that respect it's nice to hear god no and there's a chance of going that to normal like I was worried that uh it had changed that's like oh god everyone loves it and um I'll be the only one wanting to go back and there's no point doing that if I'm the only one at the office so I'm quite happy that people came back to office buildings so there's hope Paul that's good hope I am pleased I am pleased has it changed what you're doing with companies from an agile coach perspective hmm no it hasn't at all actually it's again the um working from home is harder I think especially as an agile coach where you actually get to observe people you get to overhear conversations and where um it's all about I find it hard to build relationships because everything has to be a meeting if you are working from home so um going back it has actually not changed anything um people are one thing maybe that is uh people are more technology savvy the um everyone knows how to start a zone call or a team's call and um if you need to talk to someone on a day where you aren't there you just jump on and uh have a call that makes it easier but I think nothing really big has changed so we all the two clients that you're working with now were you working with them before the pandemic started um one of them yes and one no so is it easier or harder or about the same to to get that new client started that new client relationship started um don't forget that um our pandemic has been over since May so I don't think you'll let me forget that no just rub it in May May was like last year oh my days yes incredible I'm rubbing it in and I give you every right that that was a relevant question yeah so we'll cut that so I don't look so stupid yeah well I'd edit this to make Jeff look a little sissily there but that's so many people have asked me in that you know if I was just I was lucky last year in that I was working with a a client I've been with for a while and we had that relationship we had that understanding we knew each other we um we had that trust and rapport and so actually being able to move remotely wasn't too much of a challenge for us but if I was to start with a new client that would be I think would be really tough yeah I haven't we haven't managed like I'm part of a company will be a 14 people and when lockdown happened last year we kept most of our existing clients or the ones we lost were all the tourism industries like airports and so on were gone immediately kept existing ones as you said switched to remote and um didn't get any new clients at all because um it wasn't possible to build any relationships is that what you were seeing sorry sorry well I don't I don't I honestly don't know but I don't know whether it's I don't know whether it's because those companies aren't doing as well or they're being a little bit more cautious with their spend or or or what whether they're just trying to do things on their own I don't know I was wondering if sorry sandy um I was wondering if the um because it was obviously a shorter in New Zealand from what you're describing so a shorter um period where that remote um that remote element became um the way of working you said it ended since last May obviously we we've here we feel like I mean it feels like 10 years that we've been going through this already but it's obviously probably near 10 months to be honest but I wonder whether that bounce back whether the bounce back will be easier because we've been remote for less you know for less time and we'll find it easier than to bounce back into oh it's like it never happened kind of thing is back to normal I think personally in this country Jeff I don't feel the same but I think it's going to be a lot tougher to bounce back to where we were so quickly social distancing I think it will be um a habit now that people will be used to I don't think it will just all of a sudden step into the office and people will forget I don't think it will happen that quickly interesting sounding usually you don't have masks I was chatting to a friend of mine runs a GP surgery here and so this is normally flu season and literally flu rates are at zero percent okay wow zero because everyone's wearing a mask and they're not going out they're not socializing yeah so effectively flu this season has been eradicated and he was talking about how that's massive message for society that can't be ignored and his prediction is that even if there's no coronavirus masks is something that would get people through the flu season so he sees masks staying here you look at most Asian countries where people wear a mask when they have a cold so it might be actually a good thing and I also realized that with you having dealt with this for such a long time there's actually a chance that um you might learn something whereas we just like oh this was tough cool yeah move on back to normal so I'm not sure back to normal it's so great well I don't know it seems like you have that something from a from a country would you say New Zealand I think New Zealand probably has a greater level of no that's not I'm not going to finish that sentence but I'm thinking yeah you've had earthquakes you've had all sorts of different things that as a country you tend to bounce back from so you have a significant amount of resilience built in into your culture I would say is that fair yes I think so um probably I think what was different was that this felt more like it was it was affecting everyone whereas um earthquakes some people were a lot more affected than others in Auckland I wasn't affected by an earthquake in Christchurch that much but this felt like we had this messaging of like a team of five million and there was social cohesion uh that I think helped with that's resilience hmm you've actually got quite a lot of different cultural experiences where you've lived in lots of different countries is that right have you also worked as as in the agile space in different countries yeah so how would you maybe you've probably been asked this many times before but how would you sort of summarize the differences in in in cultures that you've seen oh interesting question the um I think my original work culture is danish and um if you take that as a baseline then um New Zealand is quite hierarchical and I know that it's not compared to other countries but compared to Scandinavia it is which um you can feel when working at agile way it's I found it a lot easier introducing agile and working in agile way in Scandinavia than New Zealand but again comparing that to Austria where I've also worked um New Zealand is a super flat hierarchy and um and um people yeah a lot a lot flatter and a lot more pragmatic in Austria so there's a lot more rules in Austria and how you're supposed to do things um but yeah I do like working in all those different cultures and it's still kind of small only three countries I've never worked in the UK where where would you put the UK like somewhere around Austria more like uh New Zealand yeah I don't know I mean I think I don't feel qualified to say but I think it must give you do you find Sandy that you have to we were actually this came up in a class I was teaching just today but do you find that you have to adjust or you can you find it easy to adjust your style based on that experience based on how you've seen different um cultures and different organizations different countries and how people react differently to the same type of question oh absolutely um and that goes down to like everyday language where um I translate I I speak to a friend in Austria or Denmark and I tell them hey um I want to leave see you if I do this in New Zealand I go I'll let you go it means the same thing but you're sad in a very different way I'll let you go versus I want to leave and um I can just switch and the same goes for a hard to explain I don't work did you have did you learn that the hard way was that did it always come naturally oh yeah my sense of story behind some of it oh I was more the um totally oblivious person who didn't have a story but I think everyone around me in New Zealand knew that I was just the rude European and I think they were mainly talking about me um I had no idea I thought it might I was perfectly fair to say this is a bad idea which I would say in Denmark and um in New Zealand I wrap it in into um hard-skid thinking and um how um I appreciate the thought but uh how I ultimately believe this we should consider other options whereas uh in Austria or Denmark just go I think it's a really dumb idea and that's fine there can be a lot more directs yes but you're saying the same thing a chance that you have a better is there a chance that you have a better signal anywhere else in your house just you're breaking up quite a bit I can open the door and see I'll just go closer to the writer and hope um there is no dog barking what kind of dog you got uh a mix of everything it's um a brown um 27 kilo dog that's a mix of Border Collie American Pitbull Australian cattle dog staffy and eight more things wow did you say 27 kilos yep it's not a tiny dog quite big I was gonna say that's quite big for a dog that's a small child in my in my uh in my eyes yeah it's probably as demanding as a child well yeah I can imagine do any of you dogs I you don't do Paul no no we've got a rabbit two rabbits and four fish that's as far as we've gone I think Paul and I are the only two households in the whole of the UK that don't have a dog now it seems it's been a massive increase isn't there a massive increase in people buying dogs during lockdown the price of dogs and also the amount of stolen dogs has gone through the roof because people have they want something to do in their houses something to lift the gloom but also an excuse to get out of the house my puppy's a good thing it makes total sense I guess all of a sudden you have uh nothing else to do it's really nice going on a walk and uh yeah I'd probably get a dog too so how far away are you it is good for I think how far are you from getting a dog for your mental health oh no we're near no we're near I've been working on my wife for 20 years to get a dog and uh she refuses to get one I think the fact that we've gone through a year of lockdown and the whole of the country getting a dog and we haven't got one I think is a really strong message that that's that ship has sailed I think yeah I think we decided we decided halfway through the first lockdown we I mean we I think we probably gave it a fair bit of consideration like it it was a reasonably sensible family meeting that we had about dogs and then I think I think my wife got bitten by a dog or something something like that it was she was out running so my wife's quite went into running and the dog jumped out and kind of nipped her and that put her off that's it that was it that was no that was the no dog moment in our house yeah and also I think the uh it'd be really nice now but the pandemic is probably over in a year when everyone's vaccinated so at some point we go back to a different kind of life and the dog you're gonna have them for 10 years yeah that is true we um this came up today this is a bit of an aside here but um it was an interesting conversation I did some I did a training course today I did a day one of a training class and then the subject of defining done came up and um I thought we were about we were approaching a coffee break and um I said well let's let's make this into an exercise and I said write down quite quickly on a post-it on a will be a virtual post-it on a board what what does a good break look like you're about to have a short break and the number of people that wrote down um either stroke the cat or stroke the dog pet the dog stroke the rabbit the number of people that wrote down some kind of pet interaction and I'm seeing more cats now online than I ever have seen the cats that or cats or dogs that bark or or um or meow or walk into shot I think it's on the increase but I don't think necessarily that's a bad thing because I think they do provide some sense of of calming mindfulness absolutely they do and I think it's a cool thing that you see everyone's cats and dogs and um online it makes people kind of more interesting and also I love the idea of the yeah write down what what a good break looks to you that's um it's a really cool idea there was yeah there was lots of things around um yeah getting outside uh tea coffee a nice stretch someone said reset the back and I had to ask what that meant reset but apparently it was a it was a back a back thing a back issue um but yeah reset the back go outside move around read a page of a book someone said meditate someone else said and there you go that's what a good break like these days I'm going to link those last two things and I'm going to come back to you again Sandy on this one because you've got more practical experience on this than me but so animals and culture so I've worked at clients in the UK where they've had dogs in the office so people can bring the dog in and they can I've been teaching or facilitating or coaching in a work room and the dogs just walked in and I love dogs it's fine but I wouldn't see that in let's say Germany but just I just would never see that in Germany and I've seen teaching in Scandinavia a number of people bring their babies so they're to the training class um and I wouldn't see that in England and I don't I see a lot of animals on zoom calls in England but I don't see a lot of animals on zoom calls with people who are in other countries and I think that's that's an indication of culture maybe vulnerability maybe professionalism I don't know that kind of interpretation so you've you've actually worked in these countries would you say that's a simple I think I think totally I think totally and uh yes I really like the thought and it's a really cool observation I can also share the observation about the same countries like I wouldn't see dogs in the office in Austria maybe in a startup but I'd really I sometimes see them in New Zealand that's of smaller companies could have dogs in the office and I see lots of animals on on zoom calls um Scandinavia you're right babies you can take a baby anywhere and I haven't seen that that much in New Zealand but it's also weird because Scandinavia has really good child care hmm I noticed a set of conferences I think it was in a Scandinavian yeah there was a um someone brought in there was basically carrying a baby in a yeah in a sling around you know an open space I think it was papoose oh yes papoose that's the one good word good use of the word papoose yeah now there's one thing that I which none no I mean a little bit so I'll go for a couple of days or a week at a time but I still live in the town that I was born in what it's not a lot it doesn't get out much no it's a town it's not even a city it's a hundred miles away from London but it's a lovely place how many people hmm just you 60 000 I'm gonna google it oh nice what's the population I reckon we've got more um more non-residents than we have residents Cheltenham Wikipedia oh 115 000 there you go there you go apparently double double what I thought but you've traveled I mean Jeff you've traveled a bit you've seen like you said you may not have been in places for a long time they've done long stints but you've seen yeah different places different companies so I've done weeks at a time in Switzerland or America or um South Africa or something like that but um you know never naturally and I think you don't really see things unless you're there for a period of time and you're paying bills and you're doing chores rather than living in a hotel do you know what I mean yeah and deal with bureaucracy and you don't get the um and people stop being nice to you because you're this interesting foreigner because at some point you stop being interesting and you just better fit in I'll tell you work for it I've never stopped being interesting so please never have that problem shit neither of course neither just just you just you just you yeah I know but I've never been interesting it's a tough life ah you say that I read some I read on your profile sandy that you were you're a former Olympian but I write my own profile so of course it's interesting she's also she's also a liar yeah I thought it sounded good track or field um I know indoor court handball oh you wouldn't know what handball is do you know no you don't know like I'm sure I've seen it I'm yeah I'm sure I've seen it it's quite isn't it quite rough quite physical isn't it yeah it's a cool thing about it it's like rugby on a hard on a hard surface what I've seen yeah pretty much but you don't get to tackle people from behind so you just tackle them from the front or side so that evens out out the uh the heart surface but it's a super cool sport so how did you get on with that get on with that um I had a misband you uh being a complete sports dog and um I went to a boarding school for um athletes and then at some point I got pretty good at that and uh went to a few world cups and um the Olympics in 92 which was actually a shit load of work and um that was my entire life and I only stopped because I realized at some point I needed to grow up 92 with 92 with Barcelona was it Barcelona yeah yeah that was Barcelona yeah yeah yeah I stopped bit like um I think too yeah yeah and um yeah I think it was Plaza Domingo playing there yeah it was cool that was that I always remember that opening ceremony when because it was the archer that fired the fired the um the flame into the torch and I was like I was like looking at the TV like oh that's amazing that's amazing so you were there were you in the um were you in the um in the main opening ceremony oh yes that's cool that's a cool story yeah that was awesome yeah that's a cool story yeah I do miss those days that were cool but I I don't think I could work that hard anymore so what was it that how how did it stop was it injury or was it just was it how did you move away from from that sport I couldn't really get any further the um I it was my goal to go to the Olympics and we finished fifth which was um actually a bit of a disaster because we were the big favorites but I I can invest another four years and I can um I can work on getting gold but I didn't want to um I also was around 22 new I've seen too many people who turned 35 start working in a pizza shop and which is totally okay if that's what you really want but they didn't yeah so having no education and you live well if you are a professional handball player but it's not like tennis where you never have to work again in again in your life so um yeah great life what you're active but you can't you don't you can come out with a few savings so you can finance your studies afterwards but you're not rich so just you know I changed something went to uni got a yeah degree in computational linguistics and um yeah also moved to Denmark got a professional contract there where I played like not at an Olympic level but um kind of being paid without being world class and starting at the same time yeah awesome and was it then a straight leap from from your degree or from your education straight into agile or was it was was there another stepping stone that led you down towards more agile path almost I think I had a I had two years with a consultancy that um debt where I was a junior programmer and they um sold the uh specification document and then the design document and then the implementation phase and uh it was this great idea that the client you could just specify everything and then the client could uh had this document and they could always find different provider and I thought it was great and make complete sense until I actually tried it and uh didn't go that well and then I somehow ended up working with Sony Ericsson and around 2003 we just started working in agile way I thought everyone was doing it I think was completely normal I didn't even know really it was a big deal and um and then in 2006 or 2007 I moved to New Zealand and realized that I've been living in a bubble it hit home when you moved to New Zealand did it sorry yeah totally yeah now that's when uh nobody was interested in this agile thing and uh yeah what the hell is this actually so it was initially a hard hard sell and when you hit New Zealand it when it was a yeah it was relatively new no one was doing it tough tough um tough area to move into yes there was basically nothing to move into there were a few people around the country who had tried agile like a lot of them foreigners who didn't want to go back to the old ways of working but there was a lot of ads that's never going to work and we don't actually want to do that and I remember going yeah I don't care about everyone else but uh I'm just not going to work in this old way and started creating my own small worlds and that's basically how it became a coach that's great so from what you say New Zealand is in terms of agile maturity Sandy um I think actually not that bad I think we're probably uh behind Sweden but a head of a lot of other countries and I think what's good about New Zealand is that people are quite good at as we say giving the go try something out and um our companies are not giga enormous so we get to play with uh companies that if there are a few thousand people which is easier or 500 people which I think is easier than the 10,000 or 20,000 people or companies that you find in the US um and then there are companies that are like amazingly agile and then there are companies with uh my god you never do anything but even resembles agile and that's okay too so I don't think we are um behind I think we're actually um quite good but we have a uh quite a different um we have different companies so we don't have the the huge ones so there's very little experience here in how to run a 10,000 people company. So you don't have the same level of sort of scaling challenges that that a lot of the other countries that you've worked in have? Yes and no um we have them but I think they're not real this is funny thing about New Zealanders when um like sometimes I go to companies and they say well we need to scale and we want to do safe and I go okay so how many teams do you have and you go well three so there's a lot of um companies thinking they're big because they're big by New Zealand standards three is not not even big by New Zealand standards but they read the same things in New Zealanders they're super interesting interested in what's going on in the rest of the world and I think there's a little bit of a complex even to uh get all the knowledge they possibly can and then sometimes and they learn a lot and then sometimes misapplying it to something that's something that's made for 10,000 people John Deere like safe to um try to implement to that there are 70 people company there's no need for so uh to your question do you find yourself actually talking people out of scaling yes yes um but mainly like a couple of years ago that uh it was the whole rage scaling was the whole rage and um that has gone away I think I haven't heard that for a while have you you is that a thing in the UK at the moment yeah I think that's probably fair I think it's I think it's um there was a very a big marketing campaign maybe it was deliberate maybe it was accidental I don't know but safe was certainly running riot um that's a terrible word but but there were had a strong um push in the UK probably obviously pre-covid but maybe two three years ago I imagine they were quite it was it was quite it was everywhere and it was cool to be for a company to be thinking safe and it was it was very much seen as almost a past scrum in many respects but I think that's if anything that's tapered off a bit now I think um we're hearing about more bespoke scaling efforts and and more um you know much more uh emergent evolutionary approaches to to dealing with this is less of a people talking about it less no no pun intended yeah that's fun but yeah I think same here so I think what age has taught me is sometimes those waves as annoying as there might be you can just write them out okay yeah it'll go away a little bit but it is the thing we've um we've mentioned on previous podcasts that Jeff and I've done it is it's it's a bit of a special year this year because it is it's 20 years it doesn't seem like 20 years that um since the manifesto was written but um and me and Jeff would have been in BT perhaps after five years if we were in 2005 maybe 2006 probably talking to ourselves thinking this is never going to last we need there'll be something else in the next next next 12 months next two years but amazingly it's still you know there's still people talking about it now and there's still people do you find there's still people that you would meet or coach in New Zealand that are still relatively unaware of this whole agile thing yes and it it surprises me every single time the um like most people have heard of it most people know something but there's still people who don't know anything which is interesting and um the other type of fight is the what I struggle actually with a lot more is that the the people who think they know agile but their understanding is so different from what's oh no I think I'm in a position of the truth but what I believe agile is I scum by the numbers and that kind of stuff but yeah it's kind of shocking that it's 20 years old it's crazy isn't it it is bonkers really is bonkers what's been your favorite bit of the last 20 years that's one of those questions we're um from the interview site the question is amazing and from the victim side you go 20 years oh I don't know the best thing in agile for the last 20 years I think it's um I could have said 15 but hey yeah that would have are 15 well I can tell you that I think it's actually um I think the best thing is uh seeing um agile not just taking place in um individual pockets or teams but um that there are people around who create entire environments where um there's agile thinking and um that um just enjoyed trying things out and um enjoyed pushing boundaries and experimenting I think when you get that that's amazing and I've gotten maybe once or twice but I think for me that has been the best thing working with an e-commerce company in New Zealand called trade me where I get to try all that stuff including self-selection including um being agile everywhere um I enjoy trying out things that haven't been tried before and they're usually based on um existing agile um ideas and um philosophies so long-winded answer I think that has been the best thing for me your turn can you remember some of the things that you tried and you at the time you were thinking oh my god is this really going to work I'm really nervous and actually looking back you think what was I worried about I think the biggest one was actually doing self-selection with 200 people okay I have no idea if this is going to work um no one has published anything about how to do this um we need to figure this out ourselves it seems like a good idea it seemed like a good idea at the time but we're doing this now and actually we're in completely uncharted territory and um if it doesn't work there's something really nice about living in New Zealand or what it used to be which is um if you have more than one passport it's yeah okay if it goes all wrong I've got an Austrian passport in my back pocket I just spin it and move back to Europe and to be honest I'm actually um any client I work with I'm pretty scared or nervous to start working with because I don't know what's going to work for them I don't know if this is doable I don't know if I can do it if I can make real change and um so and that's also what's uh what's exciting about what I do but um I think the scariest it's scary every single time maybe I'm just the next one because this is your um again I tried to I tried to do a bit of research here Sandi I'd admit I tried to try to do a good thing and do some research but this is your book right you've co-authored a book on self-selection is that right yeah a bit of a plug there but a bit of a clang but go with me on it so can you just give us get a quick overview about what that's what that's for for any of our listens that don't know what's what's that all about okay um so books basically how to and it's um how to get people into teams and traditional way of getting people into teams is that you've got managers deciding uh who goes where and we flip that on its head going well we know that people um people know best who they should work with and what they should work on so why can't we just give them um a big challenge to go hey the company needs those number of teams you tell us who should be in which team so we created a whole facilitation way of facilitating that so it doesn't go off the rails and nobody ends up crying or in fights but people have grown up conversations and um figure it out and the book is a guide in a how to um get that done both if you have um yeah a few teams like four or five to um up to like um 15 20 teams okay so what what would you say is because I know a couple of companies that have done it and I know that a couple of um instances where they've and then now they've done it and they swear by it because it's transformed how they've it's taken so much of the pressure away from managers and management to form the teams and once they tried it once it was that successful they they just do it every time now it's it just makes complete sense why wouldn't you do it that way yeah so I think yeah it's it's um it's a great technique but what so what are it would you say the if you to give a couple of tips that you think are essential to to facilitate it because it is quite scary to facilitate if you haven't done it before what would you say and any advice would be if you are thinking about doing that taking that step I think be really really clear around your boundaries the um from a management point of view what happens if people don't end up in the team you thought they were going to end up or you wanted them to end up will you be prepared to go with that because if the answer is no then don't do a self-selection then just do an honest management selection so make sure that's clear be really transparent around any constraints when you facilitate the um I know uh max team size for example or like I've made the mistake that we um we had a team that we didn't want to spend a lot of budget on it's like this is probably a max three people but assume nobody would want to be there anyway eight people wanted to be there so we had to then say oh by the way we that was the point so be really clear around those constraints and the third one is let it be a real self-selection don't meddle with it don't um introduce additional things like that number of senior developers and that number of junior developers or okay people sort of just I want to do that so not too many constraints around it then you've got to give some freedom to it yes yeah and no uh you need to have that kind of domain knowledge or being in a company for that long nothing like it just makes it more complex and um it will hide solutions that because that's how I've seen this this yeah that's how I've seen this particular company do it and it worked quite well I mean I think they had to they certainly put constraints but they did put kind of um senior junior graduate kind of each team has to have those things but you'd say probably maybe don't do that then I think what they did is better than not doing it but I think yeah I wouldn't do it because I think people usually like it assumes that a senior developer equals a senior developer and an intermediate developer an intermediate developer and they don't so I think if they find any way to achieve that purpose let them be whatever combination they want to be and if it's five grads who you know are not going to pull it off your question them as a facilitator like really are you sure you can deliver to purpose are you sure that's what's best for the company what are you um what are you hoping for for the for the future sandy from a from a from an agile perspective good question I think what I noticed is um I would like to have I'd love to see a back to the basics I'd love to see things like extreme programming come back I'd love to see some of the um original ideas come back and I think that's because we're we have a new generation of people and they're building on old ideas and at some point so much time has passed that they don't even know about the old original ideas anymore and um this sounds like the old person you need to know your history but um I I was I was an adult 2019 and there was a room full of people and the presenter asked so who knows uh the book um great retrospectives by um Esther Derby and Diana Larson and three people put up their hands and um that showed me hey there's some really really good stuff that people would actually benefit from uh from reading and um there's some really good ideas that um are getting lost and I think it's not so much I uh know your history because I personally don't care about um what happened with you to anymore but I think there's some good ideas and um especially in extreme programming that love to um see not forgotten and come back I guess my back to the future yes yeah keep the philosophy intact and the ideas and I hope that I get corrupted there's a bit of a danger at the moment cool yeah what's your hopes um we had um we had a chat with Mike my cone a while ago and he said he wants our child to disappear and I I kind of you know I don't really talk a lot when I'm talking to leadership teams now I don't really talk too much about our child I talked to talk to them about coherence and resilience I mean even before the pandemic we're talking about resilience and that child is a is a tool to become more resilient in certain circumstances and so you know I think that's that's kind of where where I'm on the same sort of page there in that I want to stop having the conversation about our child if that makes sense yep yep do you my immediate hope is to get god damn lockdown we need to get through this pandemic first but if anything it's um if anything the pandemic I'm trying to to um look at it as a positive I'm trying to do a big positive thing the moment sandy I'm trying to the way I'm trying to help me and my family get through this is to try and pull a positive out of everything and I found it easier to to explain what complex problems are if anything this pandemic's taught me is it's easier to help give people a real-life example of what complexity is all about the solution nobody knows the way out of this in this country yet and I'm not speaking for you in New Zealand but in this country yet nobody really knows the how this is going to end and that's a scary thing but from an agile perspective that's kind of what you'd expect so it gives it gives um it's given me a nice way to to frame it as a positive thing but um yeah it's uh yeah it's got to be a it's got it's got to be a journey for sir for sure certainly yes well on on the whole on the whole journey you know I think that's something that we're aiming for we want to be that would be my my definition of done my acceptance criteria is that we can we can go to New Zealand it's still and this is perhaps a false hope but this was what New Zealand was always a place that me and my wife thought wouldn't it be great to live there and I don't know if that's because we went there on holiday it probably is a lot to do with that but um there's part of us that still thinks oh it'd be nice to live be in New Zealand now it would be nice to be to be able to live in New Zealand or to to work in New Zealand but you know it's um it's it's still holds because I was I was traveling around New Zealand in 20 no 2008 I did a tour around New Zealand so what a part of my heart I think I left there because I wanted to go back I promise that I take my kids back there one day so that's that's the hope yeah like any countries there's really good stuff and there's also really annoying things but um I'd love it if you move to New Zealand it'd be great it'd be great fun you'd get over the annoying stuff and um yeah as soon as you can come over um I'll be your guide brilliant whereabouts in New Zealand are you in Auckland I'm in Auckland yeah okay yes lovely lovely part of the world yeah what do we have to say I'll let you go or I want to go what do we have to say you have to let me go I will let you go I'll let you go now okay I'll let you go now Sandy and let you go now too no it was great to see you and then speak to you thanks Sandy thanks for your time cool to talk to you cheers cheers