Ryn The Guardian Melberg

This week on the Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg we will discuss why multitasking is not the productivity gain that so many people seem to think it is. A popular notion in the culture is that so called multi tasking is the mark of the most productive, smartest and therefore supremely valuable employees. While counterintuitive, it is not true. In fact not only is multitasking not the same as doing more with less, it is less productive than when we focus on a single task. Yo contact Ryn on her web site at www.rynmelberg.com.

In the past on this program we have talked about the need for better security in an on line world. We have also talked about corporate governance failures at several companies and organizations. This week we are going to discuss how corporate boards of directors manage a corporate IT crisis. Just like with traditional crisis management there is no doubt that a major IT incident will occur, it’s just a matter of when. And like with a ‘normal’ crisis, the time to get ready is in advance of the problem, but are they doing enough? Be sure to visit www.rynmelberg.com

We have been told that there were some industries that were too big to fail. What many believe is that they are simply too broke to fix. Healthcare seems like one of those that we cannot afford to let fail, but is much too broken to be repaired. Can Agile be used to fix the healthcare industry? Visit Ryn on line at www.rynmelberg.com or write to theguardianpodcast@gmail.com.

Most weeks on the podcast, Ryn talks about how Agile is used for writing code to deliver software. And different software of course runs all kinds of machinery from cars to cell phones, refrigerators, and everything else. A huge challenge in all business is how to get disciplined execution on a steady basis that is linked to innovative thinking. After all, innovative/creative thinkers are all undisciplined by definition, aren’t they? And discipline leaves no room for creativity, at all ever; or does it? The disciplined person does not ‘color outside the lines.’ But is it possible to implement Agile in non-code writing enterprises? To contact Ryn directly go to www.rynmelberg.com.

This week on the podcast Ryn Melberg describes the do's and don'ts of Agile User Stories. The overall idea with these stories is that members of the team talk about what the customer wants and why. So in a way, the user story is a way for the team to articulate what the customer wants, or at least that is the idea. is responsible for writing user stories? How can they be written so that they are most effective?

This week on the podcast, Ryn Melberg describes when and how to know the right time to move from Agile to the enterprise wide Scaled Agile Framework, which is also known as "SAFe". To contact Ryn directly visit her web page at www.rynmelberg.com.

According to an article in Reuters there are still more governance challenges for Dow CEO Andrew Liveris. This article describes an alleged role his spouse had with a remodeling project at a company owned hotel. Ryn also brings us up to date on the latest from FIFA.

This week on the podcast we will talk about the return on investment organizations can expect from implementing Agile practices. From a business point of view this is among the most persuasive aspects of adopting any business practice. That is to say does it pay to go to all the trouble of changing what we do now and learn a new way of doing things. Agile is a project management methodology that software writers adopted several years ago. But people who work in other industries are learning that the sensible, team centered, value producing and time saving methods prescribed are as useful to them as they are to software developers.

On this program we talk about programming and code writing using Agile/Safe/Scrum methodologies. We also talk a lot about governance issues at places like FIFA or Dow Chemical. But this is the first time the two have come together, at least on this program, as we discuss the scandal at Volkswagen, or VW. Where code was written to defeat regulations that led to a governance crisis. Find out how Ryn would fix it.

This week on the Guardian Podcast Ryn Melberg educates us on the role of the feature, the feature team, and the difference between features and user stories.

This week on The Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg cyber security and the business and political implications for breaches by foreign governments is the topic. The U.S. has a cyber security problem. According to published reports, the Chinese government is now building a Facebook like database filled with the profiles of federal employees and applicants with information that was stolen from the U.S. government computer databases earlier this year. Two breaches alone exposed the data of more than 20 million federal workers and contract employees. The unprecedented data breach gave hackers access to US government employee and job applicants' security clearance forms with detailed information about past drug use, love affairs, sexual proclivities, financial woes, history of violence, and foreign contacts and other information officials fear could be used for blackmail or espionage recruiting purposes as in making them spy for the Chinese.

This week Ryn will introduce us to the “stand up meeting” as part of the Agile project management way. Stand up meetings are at the heart of Agile/Scrum team organization. A stand up meeting is like any good habit that will/should become part of the daily routine for the team. But like any good habit, there is a format and organization needed. Ryn will describe the best practices and behaviors to avoid for the best outcomes at stand up meetings.

AshleyMadison.com, a site that helps married people cheat and whose slogan is “Life is Short, have an Affair” was recently hacked and information on as many as 37 million people is now public. This week on The Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg we will NOT discuss the salacious details associated with this news. But we will be covering the security and of course governance issues associated with it. Among other things Ryn will discuss: - Security on sites like Ashley Madison, - How this security breech is important even for people who do not own a computer. - Backdoor hacks, - And why or why not we should have any confidence that our personal information is secure. To contact Ryn directly, visit her web site at www.rynmelberg.com.

This week on The Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg we learn about the true ways an organization becomes and embraces Agile. What each must have to separate the Agile from the fakes and wannabes. To contact Ryn go to www.rynmelberg.com.

This week on The Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg, tests and testing for users of the Agile project management methodology are described and discussed. How testing gets done with Agile is where the differences are.

This week on The Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg we review three governance cases to see what progress has been made since we first discussed them. These are governance issues at FIFA, The Dow Chemical Company, and the passenger cruise industry.

This week on The Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg we discuss 3 huge governance and IT security failures. A couple of weeks ago, there was what can only be described as a very unusual coincidence. On July 8, 2015 the New York Stock Exchange, The Wall Street Journal and United Airlines were taken off the web by what were reported to be ‘technical glitches’. Now this is not a conspiracy show, there are plenty of those out there already. But at the very least, it is a level of failure that would cause even the most jaded to consider that this was done deliberately. Ryn helps us sort out what these 3 organizations had in common and why they were easy targets.

This week on The Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg, we are going to learn about another role in the Agile project management world, that of ‘development operations’ or as it is more commonly known, ‘devops’. There are a lot of definitions of the term and at first look, this seems to be a role that is very much an eye of the beholder kind of thing but Ryn cdescribes the role and need for it in Agile very succinctly.

This week on The Guardian Ryn Melberg describes a couple of more roles in the Agile project management world, that of Scrum Master and then later the Relief Train Engineer.

Last week we learned about Scrum so this week we press ahead with another piece of the nomenclature, and that is the Product Owner and Product Manager in THE Agile and SAFE system.