10 Coaching Questions To Enable Self-Organization
As a recovering manager I want to stop solving problems for teams So that I can enable self-organization... One of the biggest reasons I failed my first attempt at the Scrum.org PSM-1 assessment was that I had a habit of solving problems I had no business solving. Ken...
Scaling Professional Scrum From 10 to 10,000: 10 Questions I Wish I Had Known
Over the past 10 years, I have had the privilege to guide Scrum adoption for organizations from 10 people to 10,000 people and have made some glorious, cringe-worthy mistakes that often wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. As I look back at my...
“Scrum Is A Blank Check For Developers!” – 7 Ways To Stop Them From Emptying Your Bank Account!
True story - happened in one of my recent Professional Scrum Master workshops. I think had just mentioned that there is no "Sprint Commitment" in Scrum, only a "Sprint Forecast". The eyes of one of my students lit up with glee. Uh-Oh, I thought. This is going to be...
Machine Learning & Scrum – 9 Months, 6 Minutes & 1 Niggling Thought…
NINE MONTHS Like many old, boring people, my favorite radio channel in the car is National Public Radio. Since I live in Dallas, TX, my local channel is KERA. Of all the shows in KERA, my favorite is a show called Think With Krys Boyd. Almost each show I listen to...
14 Stances of Highly Effective Product Owners
The role of the Scrum Product Owner is probably the most misunderstood of the three Scrum Roles. As I look back at the different incarnations and interpretations I have seen of Product Ownership, I thought it was time to articulate the different stances I thought an...
I’m Not Calling Your Baby Ugly – Two Ways and 25 Dimensions to Compare Agile Scaling Frameworks
True Story... Many times, clients ask Agile Coaches like me to come in and share our "expertise" with them. But sometimes they really don't want our "Expertise". What they really want is someone with lots of TLA's to come and tell them that there pre-existing opinions...
SLEEPLESS IN CXO LAND: HOW SMART CXO’S BEAT STRESS WITH STRATEGIC SCRUM
THE (MIXED) BLESSING OF NEXTGEN REWRITES About 10 years ago, I experienced the mixed blessing of being part of yet another nextgen rewrite project. I was guiding a team of about 25 really smart team members, part of a much larger team of about 150+ people. Our team...
Agility-As-A-Service: 10 Questions For Choice-Based Agile Enablement
IMAGINE Imagine you have just been asked to build an Agility Enablement Organization for your company. Sounds like fun, but there are some constraints you need to work within or around… There are 100+ teams with varying levels of interest in Agile You only have a...
2017 Waste Loss Challenge: Reduce Your Sabotagile Quotient!
NEW YEAR RESOLUTION So it's a new year. New Year, new start, yadda yadda yadda... Maybe you are considering some New Year Resolutions so I wanted to invite you to take our 2017 waste-loss challenge by decreasing your Sabotagile Quotient. This challenge builds upon my...
AGILE OR SABOTAGILE: HELP YOUR MANAGEMENT UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE
EMBARRASSING CONFESSION OK, so this will be awkward, and maybe cringe-inducing post. But we are approaching the new year. Plenty of people might be making new year resolutions. Many will be around fitness. So everyone needs to read this. I was once really impressed by...