In Stuck in the Middle, Part 1, I discussed possible management problems with agile. Those aren’t the only stuck problems I see. Sometimes, I see team problems. What if the teams are “almost agile”—they still have too many experts, their stories are too big, they don’t always deliver value on a regular basis? You know […]
In part 1, I addressed some management challenges with an agile transition. In part 2, I addressed some team issues. In this part, I’ll discuss why agile is a culture change and ways to consider a system change to agile. Agile looks something like this image. The responsible person (often called a product owner)
For many people, agile means an end to all project management. I disagree. I find value in servant leadership in project management. I explain how you can think about servant leadership and agile project management in my projectmanagement.com column this month: Servant Leadership: The Agile Way. If you are looking to increase your servant leadership
Is your agile transition proceeding well? Or, is it stuck in places—maybe the teams aren’t improving, maybe the people are multitasking, maybe you are tired and don’t know how you’ll find the energy to continue. You are the kind of person who would benefit from the Influential Agile Leader workshop. Gil Broza and I co-facilitate.
I have several public workshops this year. I’m offering the Influential Agile Leader with Gil Broza April 6-7, 2016 in Boston and May 4-5, 2016 London. If you have not read some of my writing about leadership, take a look at these previous newsletters: ▪ Lead Your Agile Transition Through Influence ▪ Creating an Environment
A recent coaching client was concerned about the progress his team was making—or really, the lack of progress his team was making. We spoke about the obstacles he had noticed. “The team doesn’t have time to write automated tests. As soon as they finish developing or testing a feature, people get yanked to another project.” “Are people, developers
In self-organizing teams, teams remove their own obstacles. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. In Scrum, the Scrum Master is supposed to facilitate removing the team’s obstacles that the team can’t remove. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. And, what if you aren’t doing Scrum, or you’re
Cesar Abeid interviewed me, Project Management for You with Johanna Rothman. We talked about my tools for project management, whether you are managing a project for yourself or managing projects for others. We talked about how to use timeboxes in the large and small, project charters, influence, servant leadership, a whole ton of topics. I
Workshop Objective: We use influence all the time at work. If you have tried and not been as successful as you like, it’s time to take the next step and learn to discover your personal power and use your influence to accomplish all that you can. Workshop Overview: There is a limit to what we
One of the familiar tensions in management is how you encourage or discourage people from bringing you problems. One of my clients had a favorite saying, “Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions.” I could see the problems that saying caused in the organization. He prevented people from bringing him problems until the problems were