Recommended Agile Videos

Agile Video Image
Agile is an incredibly social and collaborative area to work within with a multitude of ways to learn more and connect with fellow practitioners.

Videos are a great way to learn more on the subject. I have included here my top twenty favourite videos from the multitude that are available for free.

  1. Agile Product Ownership In A Nutshell (15m 51s) Awesome video from Henrik Kniberg on the role and responsibilities of a Product Owner within Scrum. The animation using the ArtRage drawing software provides an excellent overview covering stories, prioritisation, planning and scaling. The end drawing is also available as are translated versions of this video.
  2. Spotify Engineering Culture – Part 1 Of 2 (13m 12s) Great video from Henrik Kniberg explaining the transformation of engineering at Spotify with Agile practices. Produced in January 2014 this video details the journey the teams at Spotifywere going through at the time. Good animated style using the ArtRage drawing software as per the ‘Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell’ video with the end drawing available again.
  3. Spotify Engineering Culture – Part 2 Of 2 (13m 27s) Henrik Kniberg’s second Spotify Engineering Culture video was recorded back in April 2014 and describes the continuing transformation at Spotify. In the same style as his first two, this video details the continuing cultural work being done at Spotify showing how the company was progressing two years back. Spotify has continued to evolve since this point including recent major team updates but it is good to look back and see how the company transformed it’s business. Produced again in ArtRage with the end drawing available.
  4. Intro To Agile Scrum In Under 10 Minutes – What Is Scrum? (8m 52s) A massively popular overview of Scrum presented by Hamid Shojaee from Agile Project Management software supplier Axosoft. An informative and short overview of Scrum that’s worth seven minutes of your time (extended by a sales pitch for Axosoft at the end).
  5. Intro To Kanban In Under 5 Minutes (4m 8s) Angelo Copolla from Axosoft gives the essentials of Kanban with a short and useful explanation. This video is similar to the ‘Intro to Agile Scrum in Under 10 Minutes’ with an animated style that widens Axosoft’s Agile coverage to Kanban.
  6. Pentagon Wars – Bradley Fighting Vehicle Evolution (10m 59s) A lesson in Product Management from the film Pentagon Wars (also available on YouTube and worth a watch in itself). The film is based on the book The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard by Col. James G. Burton. Tracing the design and troubled development of the Bradley this video is a great example of mission creep and politics.
  7. RSA Animate – Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (10m 47s) This is the RSA Animate video adapted from Dan Pink’s excellent RSA talk on motivation. Also see Dan Pink’s excellent book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us for more on what truly motivates us at home and in the workplace. Engaging animation by Andrew Park from Cognitive Media that is well worth watching to push back on some of that old school management.
  8. Nordstrom Innovation Lab: Sunglass iPad App Case Study (6m 42s) Excellent example of Scrum being used for rapid development of a sunglasses fitting sales application for the iPad. Developed by the Nordstrom innovation team in one week whilst located within their flagship store in Seattle. A great example of the speed of design thinking within Agile development and the incorporation of real and direct customer feedback. Epilogue… the Nordstrom innovation lab was (mainly) disbanded at the start of 2015 when it ‘pivoted’ and its engineers were ‘redistributed’ throughout the company, a spokesman stated “Rather than just a team focused on innovation, it’s now everyone’s job”.
  9. Jeff Sutherland – OpenView Labs (various) There are a lot of great videos from the co-inventor of Scrum Jeff Sutherland. OpenView Venture Partners have a great set of fourteen videos available to watch for free on YouTube.
  10. Hitler At A Sprint Review (4m 4s) What would happen if Hitler attended a Sprint review? The painfully humorous subtitles are shown against a clip from the film Downfall (91% on Rotten Tomatoes) to highlight where FrAgile practices can get you. Whilst in Stuttgart recently a German colleague remarked that the video was fine but whoever worked on the subtitle translation should be shot.
  11. Competing On The Basis of Speed (60m 49s) Mary Poppendieck, co-founder of the Lean Software Development movement, speaks at Google engEDU in May 2008. Engaging presentation looking at fast development whilst maintaining quality, reducing complexity and focusing on value. Mary and Tom Poppendieck’s books are also worth looking at.
  12. Bay XP Meeting: Agile Estimation – Part 1 & Part 2 (95m 17s) Mike Cohn is an Agile luminary famous for user stories and estimation techniques. These two videos comprise his excellent Agile estimation presentation that is available as a one day course, online training or companion book.
  13. Scrum Et Al. (61m 4s) Ken Schwaber, co-inventor of Scrum, presents the basic framework of Scrum at the Google Tech Talks in September 2005. A long but useful video looking at the basics but also at implementation issues commonly seen.
  14. Agile Alliance Videos (various) There are a large number of free videos available from the Agile Alliance who are a non-profit organisation committed to advancing Agile development principles and practices. These resources have been made available to raise the level of Agile knowledge and skills globally. Note that for more advanced topics an annual membership is required.
  15. TV Agile videos (various) TVAgile.com is a directory of videos covering Agile and Lean development approaches and practices. There are some great videos to watch here and it will take you a while to get through them all thus saving money on your Netflix subscription.
  16. Rally Video Tutorials (various) Tool supplier and consultancy Rally have made available a set of Agile video tutorials to help the community and promote their offerings. These are high-quality videos helping with foundation level Agile practices.
  17. Scrum In The Real World, An AGILE Movie (5m 52s) Vimeo provides a platform for people to upload, share or sell videos. There are a large number of Agile videos on the site, this one from Bruno Sbille is a great video with the perfect soundtrack showing how Agile projects are developed from concept to delivery.
  18. Scrum Training Series videos (various) This site contains a series of are six videos that teach the major aspects of Scrum in an interesting animated style. These are good quality and highly-regarded videos that split Scrum foundation training into six easily-digestible segments.
  19. Scrum Alliance Videos (various) There are a range of free Scrum Fundamentals and Learning Consortium webinars produced by the Scrum Alliance, the worlds largest Scrum organisation. The recorded webinars from leading Agile practitioners from across industry are made available on this site for later viewing.
  20. Where The Hell Is Matt? 2012 (4:52) OK, bear with me on this one, Matt Harding whilst travelling in 2003-2004 uploaded a few videos for his friends of him dancing his ‘particular’ dance. Edited together, the video went viral and Matt was sponsored in 2006 to travel wider with his dance and produce a second version with 32 locations world-wide (18 million hits). In 2008 Matt decided dancing alone was boring and created a third version dancing through 42 countries with local groups over 14 months (43 million hits). In 2012 Matt finally realised that dancing with other people in their own styles was the real destination and visited 71 locations in 55 countries to produce his final video (17 million hits and counting). This is a great (and long) version of iterative development, pivoting, value creation and moving into a collaborative environment.

That is it, just twenty links to some great Agile resources – please let me know if you have others as good.