If you read my scaling agile series, you can see that becoming an agile organization requires seeing your organization as a system with a culture. You can start with teams, move to programs and the product part of the organization. If you don’t also address the cultural problems of rewards, you won’t continue with your […]
Agile culture is about the ability to change. (You need to know why you want to change, but once you know that, agile cultures promote change.) We (as agile teams and organizations) deliver something to get some feedback and learning. We use that feedback and learning about what we just did to challenge our assumptions
Introduction to an Agile Transformation series… I’ve seen several agile transformation challenges. Since I want to address those challenges, this is a series of posts about agile transformation. The problems I’m planning to address are: Understanding why agile, why now Change and why we might not be so facile with change and how that challenges
I was on vacation last week, thinking about value. Depending on my role, I might think of value as: Delivery of a feature or story, assuming it’s the right level of quality and when I want it. Information about the story. This might include information from the team about what they think about this story,
Gil Broza and I are thrilled to announce the updated version of our flagship workshop, the Influential Agile Leader. If you have these kinds of challenges: Your business can’t “stop” to recreate itself as an agile organization. You need to continue and to nurture the cultural changes necessary for a successful agile transformation. You don’t
I’m a monthly contributor to the Gurock blog. This month’s article is Feedback & Feedforward for Continuous Improvement: Using Double-Loop Learning Challenges Our Assumptions. Single-loop learning is when you “Plan the work and work the plan.” Double-loop learning is when you challenge assumptions during the project. Agile approaches allow us to do so. This is the
Sprints, by definition, are a timebox. You’re supposed to say, “Pencils down!” at the end of the sprint, show your work and reflect. One of the big problems with new-to-agile teams is their inability to finish work inside a sprint. Each team is unique. However, I’ve seen these causes most often: Team members multitask, so
My most recent article on projectmanagement.com is 3 Questions to Ask Before Estimating an Agile Program. In both Create Your Successful Agile Project and Agile and Lean Program Management, I talk about the reality of estimates in most settings. The question is what kind of an estimate does your project or program need? I’m not opposed to
Ryan Ripley interviewed me on his podcast, Agile for Humans 83 about Create Your Successful Agile Project. We had a blast. I didn’t stint on my opinions or on my experience with agile teams. One of those opinions was about teambuilding, which I wrote about in Creating an Environment of Teamwork. The other opinion (based on
A colleague asked my opinion on the various teambuilding activities she was considering for a new-to-agile team, to help them get to know each other and work together. All the activities she considered were simulations of various kinds. I suggested she reconsider the simulations and focus on the work to help people learn to work