Some company is buying your company (or vice versa). Why? They claim it’s “Economies of scale,” and the combined organization will save money by centralizing “overhead” and flattening management. You know who that “overhead” is: the people who support the business, such as finance and HR. And, the managers. Worse, the new management asks managers […]
I started this series with many specific concerns about a particular interview question: “The product owner and dev team cannot decide on a sprint goal, even after hours of discussion. They (the team) feel that the tasks for the sprint are too varied to manage to a single sprint goal. What should the Scrum Master
Many agile teams and product leaders assume they can make many product decisions on their own. They do have some constraints, such as “this kind of customer” and “these kinds of problems.” However, as the teams work together and explore the product, they assume they can decide on the designs and architecture. Product leaders assume
Tim, the Engineering VP, was worried he would lose people after their reviews and salary changes. He didn’t have enough money to pay the salaries he thought everyone deserved. He’d fought with his fellow VPs for more money, but that didn’t work. He had a too-small pot of money to distribute. He had these problems:
To summarize: your agile transformation is stuck. You’ve thought about your why, as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 1: Define Your Why. You’ve started to measure possibilities. You have an idea of who you might talk with as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 2: Who to Approach. You’ve considered who you need as allies and how to enlist them
To summarize: your agile transformation is stuck. You’ve thought about your why, as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 1: Define Your Why. You’ve started to measure possibilities. You have an idea of who you might talk with as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 2: Who to Approach. You’ve considered who you need as allies and how to enlist them
To summarize: your agile transformation is stuck. You’ve thought about your why, as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 1: Define Your Why. You’ve started to measure possibilities. You have an idea of who you might talk with as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 2: Who to Approach. Now, how do you create allies so you can unwedge
To summarize: your agile transformation is stuck. You’ve thought about your why, as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 1: Define Your Why. You have some idea for measurements. Maybe you’ve even started to measure to capture the data. Now, it’s time to talk to people across the organization. The question is this: Who do you talk
What does it mean to be an agile leader? Here’s what I’ve seen work: The leader recognizes a problem the organization needs to solve. There may be many problems, and the leader extricates one to start. The leader explores options with the people involved. Often, the leader asks this question, “What is the smallest change
I once worked in an organization where the senior managers thought they should motivate us, the team members. They decided to have a team competition, complete with prizes. I was working on a difficult software problem with a colleague on another team. We both needed to jointly design our pieces of the product to make