Most managers I meet want to do a good job. They want to provide the vision for the people doing the work. They want to provide coaching if people need it. They want to know that people can deliver the outcomes the organization needs and the managers want. As their organizations move to agile approaches,
Mark Kilby and I are almost done with the chapter on geographically dispersed teams with no (or very few) hours of overlap in our book about distributed agile teams. We are looking for any example of a team—agile or not—who successfully used/is using Follow the Sun. Follow the Sun is a great idea. The idea is
One of the problems I see in projects and organizations is when people wish for certainty. Too many agile project managers and Scrum Masters want a known velocity. They don’t realize that velocity is a relative capacity measurement, not a guarantee. Product managers, the people who manage the project portfolio, all seem to want certainty
Sometimes, teams have trouble releasing their work, showing the value of the work they’ve completed. There are many possible reasons for this release problem: The team doesn’t have sufficient working agreements about what “done” means. I’ve written about frictionless releasing. In Create Your Successful Agile Project, I wrote about the done, done-done, and done-done-done words we
We, as people who create products, often have big, audacious ideas. That’s great. The problem is this: How can you make minimum, bite-size stories that the team can deliver on a frequent basis? You might need these minimums: A minimum marketable feature A minimum viable product A minimum viable experiment All of these minimums are
Agile transformations are tough. That’s because wherever you start, the agile transformation creates culture clashes. Often, teams start with agile approaches. Teams discover the agile approach and practices that work for that team. Then, as the team gains experience, they refine their approach and practices. That’s the external part of what we see in an agile transformation.
Are you looking to help support your team, management, or organization’s agile adoption? Do you feel as if you are part of the formal or informal team leading your agile transformation? You need what Gil Broza and I teach and facilitate at the Influential Agile Leader Workshop. I wrote a number of posts about transformations:
Mark Kilby and I have finished the first four chapters of From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver. We thought we had five finished chapters. Then we realized how much more work we had, to move from Google docs to Markdown. Sigh. We have four finished chapters 🙂 And, we know how to collaborate in
I delivered a webinar called Agile Metrics for Team and Product Progress last week, thanks to the nice folks at Innovation Roots. I had fun and so did many of the participants. One person gave me a new saying about metrics (at the end, during the Q&A): Are you data-driven or data-informed? It’s such a great
One of my clients has many reasons for wanting an agile transformation. Their old products are at the end of their lives. They need agile approaches so they can get feedback from customers as they develop the new products. They need to deliver to their customers more often. They need to create a mix of