The Software Field Manual

Kevin Tolva is a senior management consultant with Kenway Consulting in Chicago, Illinois. He focuses on developing, and implementing leading edge solutions that take advantage of critical business opportunities. Kevin's true passion is agile development methodologies and is a recognized leader in the field. He's coached over 20 teams through their agile adoption journey, and has  authored multiple training courses for Kenway's consulting practice. Show Notes Waterfall project management was predicated on very large sequential steps in order to get delivery. Planning phases with exit criteria, then functional design, coding, testing & deployment. Usually very long phases that got you to an end goal. Waterfall was taking too long to get projects out the doors and a company’s ability to react was impeded by these very long cycles of development. The degree of error gets much larger as you get farther out. The degree of uncertainty is much smaller for the things that you know this week or in two to three weeks. The agile manifesto has been around since the 1970s but the agile manifesto was written in 2001. With agile, the focus is on right sizing of documentation at the right time. By breaking the work down into smaller chunks you can make what you’re defining much more digestible. It doesn’t have to be perfectly defined from the beginning. This shorter cycle allows stakeholders the ability to react and change courses more easily throughout the process. This not only delivers a higher quality product but the features are what are actually wanted and desired. The most popular agile framework is scrum. There is still some amount of planning; sometimes referred to as Sprint 0. After that you have one to many interations or sprints. These iterations are typically one to three weeks. Anything longer than that is closer to waterfall. The first step is a sprint planning meeting where the whole team gets together with the product owner and the product owner has a prioritized list of work they want to do. The developers get a consensus and common understanding of the work that needs to be done and they pull it into the sprint and commit to doing that work within the sprint. At the end of the sprint there is a showcase or demo where the development teams shows off what they’ve gotten done. Repeat and rinse until the work is completed. After the sprint, especially for young teams, is completing a retrospective. This is an opportunity to look at what went wrong, what we need to improve, and then agree on the few things that we really need to focus on to improve as a team. This is critical for young teams in their agile adoption journey. In the beginning you need to build a product backlog. This will be the items that need to be done to get your product out the door. In the beginning having enough stories to fill one or two sprints will be enough to get started. If your backlog is ready the time to get a sprint started will be fairly minimal. Once the backlog is ready, you can begin a sprint planning session. This is typically the product owner, the scrum team, the scrum master and the business analyst deciding what they want to bring into the sprint. During the duration of the sprint it’s really the job of the product owner to answer ad hoc questions. If you’re going by the book, product owners don’t sit in on the daily meetings to allow the team to speak more freely but this is not a hard and fast rule. Typically stories are written by either the product owner of the business analyst. Stories don’t have to be all that complicated are typically contain who (the actor), what needs to get done, and the result of the story. Typically this is a very small piece of work. The acceptance criteria is very granular. You have to make sure the acceptance criteria is not subjective. Stories should be written in the business voice rather than the technical voice. The technical details get brought in during the sprint...

Tim J. Dean is founder of Coaching Dean, a global certified coach, recognized trainer and sought after keynote speaker with a passion for empowering others to realize their full potential. A published author and motivational speaker, Tim also possesses an in-depth knowledge of the five working generations and currently teaches “Leveraging Generational Diversity” as an adjunct professor for the John Cook School of Business at St. Louis University. With extensive business experience across several industries, Tim brings a unique balance and powerful mix of strategy, empathy and real-world insights to every speaking engagement. Tim’s published work, Coaching Millennials, is available on Amazon in Coaching Perspectives V. Show Notes When it comes to making a career change, if you’re already thinking about the process you’ve already made the mental shift. But this transition doesn’t need to be feast or famine and it can be as slow and controlled as you’re comfortable with. When the fear of not making a change has finally surpassed making the change, you’re ready. The process though will never be about discovering something new it will always be rediscovering something that’s been missing in your life. Within six months there will be five generations in the workplace. These generations and their characteristics are based on the social, political, economic and technological events that occurred when the individuals were between the ages of eight and twenty. Negative stereotypes are what often prevent effecting interactions between the generations and cause conflict so its import to remove the stereotypes from the beginning. Some unique strengths across the generations: Traditionalists – practical, loyal, incredible work ethic, a feeling of civic duty Baby Boomers – workaholics, educated, great mentors, value formal training, competitive Gen X –staunchly independent, value work/life balance and the results of their work Millennials – incredibly collaborative, crave input, multi-taskers, connected, first global generation Gen Z – pragmatic & realistic In general you can always find stereotypes represented in every generation but but the goal is to focus on the individual not the stereotype or the generation as a whole. 3/4th of every communication we experienced as a child was negative. One strategy to use is reverse mentoring. Find another generation and form a reverse mentoring relationship. Because of technology, for the first time ever, the older generation is going to younger generations to learn things. Thus far, there is no proof that any generation has not been able to do what they needed to get done. Regardless of showing up on the cover of Time magazine, no generation has “failed.” Some of the core values that make up each generation are: Traditionalists – Their word is their bond, they’re committed, respect authority Boomers - Live to work, optimists, value personal growth, authenticity, compensation GenX – Self-reliant, techno-literate, resourceful, savvy, flexible Millenials – Interest in work-life integration rather than work-life balance GenZ – Open to many options; not just those used by previous generations The mutual years of loyalty to a single company are never company back but millennials may be willing to stay longer if they’re treated like family The reality is there are not enough GenXers to fill all the open position so employers will need to attract, develop, coach & retain younger generations. Because millennials have grown up with so much social media it has created some hesitation to become 100% individualistic. As a result, 70% of millennials will make a decision when they know their friends will agree and validate that decision. For younger managers managing older employees: Get the stereotypes out of the way and then focus on the goals Figure out what that individual values for their contribution Recognize that communication is key and that each generation communicates and learns in a differen...

Jen Spencer is the Vice President of Sales & Marketing for SmartBug Media, a leading growth marketing agency in inbound marketing, digital strategy, design, marketing automation, and PR, that assists businesses in generating leads, increasing awareness, and building brand loyalty. For more information or to contact Jen directly you can send her an email or give her a call at (949) 236-6448. Show Notes Inbound marketing is about buyers and buyer behavior.  The power in the sales process has shifted from being with the salesperson to being with the buyer. The concept of inbound marketing is that you first identify who your ideal customer is and then put content out there and promote it in places where your ideal customer is listening. This is intended to drive people back to your website and convert them to leads. This isn’t just a numbers game nor about simply creating more content. Because there’s so much content out there right now, buyers are starting to gloss over much of the sub-par content that people are promoting. It’s best to use data oriented strategies in your execution. It’s important to do thorough psychological research for your buyer personas, then use that content in not only the way you approach your content creation but content but also things like your website, PR and sales enablement. Inbound marketing can work as well for B2C as it does for B2B. If your buyer buys online or looks for information to education themselves online then inbound makes sense. It matters more about how your buyer makes their buying decision. The customer journey starts with creating your buyer personas. These are semi-fictional representations of your buyer. SmartBug interviews 3-5 different individual that are purchasing a product so they can understand how they think and operate and to find out what’s important to them. When you’re starting a company you always have a ton of ideas. It’s important to prioritize these ideas to determine if they’re inline with your buyer personas and what kind of impact they will have. Then, identify the pain this person has and how you can help them. You need provide value before they’re willing to get to know you or give you their credit card. When you’re putting together a buyer persona the types of things you want to know about are their your consumer’s responsibilities, how they are evaluated, what’s going to cause them to look for some kind of a solution, and how will they measure success. You should ask these questions of people that are actually your customers or your potential customers so you don’t introduce your own bias about what’s important. You should also figure out what objections or challenges they have that would keep them from investing in your product. Why would they not choose you and what’s potentially at risk for them. You should also know what role that individual plays in the decision. The best way to move someone through the sales process is to focus on what they’re interested in. sending people information about content and services they’re not interested in will only make the buyer feel like you don’t care about them Some of the key benefits you get from a marketing automation platform is it should both meet the needs you have today and also be able to grow with your business. Your technology should give you a window into buyer behavior and should also be easy to use. You have to make an investment in more complicated technology if what you’re offering is more also complex. If you have a simple offering or a single buyer persona then you may not need a more sophisticated tool. Some of the differences between simple email marketing and a marketing automation tool are the ability to nurture individuals as well as setting up automated campaigns that will drip the right content to the right people at the right time. It should also be able to turn that content on or off depending on their behavior. Buyers today expect that you know everything about them.

Mike Allton is an award-winning blogger, speaker, and author at The Social Media Hat, and Brand Evangelist at Agorapulse where he strengthens relationships with social media educators, influencers and agencies. In this episode Shane and Mike discuss the basics you'll need to know for kicking off your social media strategy.

The founder of the SaaS Field Manual, Shane Freeman, offers a personal welcome, discusses the scope of the project and the intentions behind the the SaaS Field Manual Framework.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin nec eleifend lectus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam erat volutpat. Cras eu lectus non ligula pellentesque convallis. In bibendum dolor lorem, et varius est maximus eget. Maecenas tristique at felis in molestie. Aliquam quis egestas erat. Ut faucibus, ante at tempus ultrices, est nulla porttitor est, eu interdum purus sapien id dui. Visit Aspen Grove Studios, non porttitor ante sodales. Ut in luctus turpis, vehicula imperdiet nulla. Vestibulum eleifend massa convallis libero convallis, nec tristique lectus tempor. Morbi vulputate nulla eget risus luctus tincidunt. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec sed nibh blandit, efficitur risus ut, viverra ligula. Donec nec mauris magna. Quisque sodales lacus vitae sapien cursus luctus. Pellentesque sed egestas ex, eu iaculis dui. Curabitur sit amet dolor eget massa interdum hendrerit. Nunc eget hendrerit lectus. Sed commodo condimentum maximus. Sed vestibulum sem sagittis accumsan tempus. Donec finibus egestas ligula, id dignissim eros. Sed orci ipsum, facilisis a semper ut, maximus malesuada elit. Phasellus vehicula libero vel eros varius venenatis. Phasellus a diam a magna dapibus ullamcorper non at neque. https://dap.aspengrovestudios.space/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/SampleAudio.mp3 In vitae risus maximus odio ultricies imperdiet. Suspendisse porttitor nec ante at pellentesque. Duis diam leo, placerat non feugiat vel, dapibus id tortor. In ut sollicitudin neque. Aliquam cursus, orci quis vulputate tempus, orci odio tempus nulla, eu feugiat felis leo quis enim. Phasellus commodo ex lectus, quis volutpat tellus luctus vitae. Etiam varius accumsan est eget gravida. Nulla urna felis, iaculis at tempor eu, blandit id nulla. Etiam ut dui libero. Nam euismod euismod mauris id imperdiet. Phasellus rutrum dapibus libero commodo iaculis. Praesent sit amet ipsum lectus. Curabitur tincidunt justo sit amet enim molestie, quis ornare nunc ornare. Nullam tincidunt ex non augue vulputate, non commodo arcu consectetur. Aenean eget sagittis ex, ut blandit neque. Cras tempor eros a massa malesuada, quis mollis justo bibendum. Mauris vel tincidunt purus. Vestibulum in tristique nisl. Fusce dapibus feugiat magna, vel fermentum velit congue et. Quisque ut diam laoreet mauris vehicula pharetra quis et diam. Nam rutrum posuere odio. Donec sed pretium ligula, vitae consectetur leo. Aenean dolor erat, imperdiet a nunc non, volutpat rhoncus nibh. In iaculis consectetur sodales. Sed mollis lorem nec tincidunt finibus. Proin maximus tortor lacus, vel consectetur magna laoreet sed.