Let me guess. If you are a successful woman, in the past, you’ve been told you’re too abrasive, too direct, maybe even too assertive. Too much. See The One Word Men Never See In Their Performance Reviews. Here’s the problem. You might be. I was. But never in the “examples” my bosses provided. The “examples” […]
People want to know the “secret sauce” for hiring Scrum Masters and agile coaches. I wish it was easy to provide a standard set of questions. Because your agile team is unique, your questions should be different. However, there are some common qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills among Scrum Masters. First, do a job analysis
In my article, Which “Scrum Master” Are You Hiring?, I suggested you articulate the type of leader you might be hiring. Why? You might not be hiring a “Scrum Master” at all—but you are likely hiring a servant leader. In this article, let’s discuss the kind of qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills you might need
Have you looked at some of the ads for Scrum Masters lately? Some ads include the need for PMPs or they say they will give you a bonus if you complete the project at a certain time or to someone’s satisfaction. Some talk about hiring the team or about managing the customer’s expectations. Some talk
We often think about a succession plan for managers. But, if you’re not thinking about a succession plan for your technical team, you’re falling prey to local shortages, and hiring the same old kinds of people. You’re not getting diverse people. That means you may not be able to create innovative, great products. It also
I posted my most recent Pragmatic Manager newsletter, Scale Agile With Small-World Networks on my site. This is a way you can scale agile out, not up. No hierarchies needed. Small-world networks take advantage of the fact that people want to help other people in the organization. Unless you have created MBOs (Management By Objectives)
If you are organized as platform team, middleware, and front-end teams, you have a component team organization. That made sense at one point in your history. But if you are transitioning to agile or have transitioned, and if you want to use agile on a program, that might not make much sense now. If you
Scale Agile With Small-World Networks Some organizations, when they think of programs (a collection of projects with one business objective), think of many teams, each with Scrum Masters or project managers. That’s one way to scale agile. That’s scaling up. It creates a hierarchy. Hierarchy can slow you down with centralized decision-making, coordination, and communication.
Way back when I was a developer, my professors taught me structured design and design by contract. Those were supposed to be the silver bullets for programming. You see, if you specified things enough, and structured things enough, everything would all work out. I thought I was the only idiot that structure and specification didn’t
If you’re a hiring manager, you might think that once you’ve made the offer you’re home free. Not quite. Maybe you think that once your new hire starts, you’re home free. Nope. You don’t get to see the results of your new hire until your new hire is integrated into the day-to-day work of the