Three Tips to Move from Certainty to Openness Dan, a senior manager, sees the end of the organization’s traditional business lines. He thinks they have a few good years with their current customers and products. However, he’s sure the company needs to find another way to meet their customers’ needs. And probably, acquire more and […]
Three Tips to Move from Agile in Name Only to Real Agility Several of you have written to me, asking about the problems you see. Your managers focus on certifications, practices, and vanity metrics—not real agility. The managers don’t understand how agility can help them. You see cargo cult agile. You worry that agility is
Work From Home? Three Ideas for Better Project Agility Samantha, an agile manager, had a big problem. Back before everyone had to work from home, they had pretty good results with their standard agile approach. However, now that this eight-person team worked from home, they had these problems: The team didn’t share the same work
Three Secrets to Building Your Influence, Part 3, Shared Interests If you want to change anything in your organization, you need to influence at least one other person to succeed. I wrote about showing your competence in Part 1. Part 2 was about building trust. Now, let’s talk about creating win-wins with shared interests. I bet you’ve met people who
Three New Year’s Tips to Ease Your Team’s Agility I hope you are all having a terrific holiday season. A reader asked me about tips I had to ease her project’s transition from waterfall to an agile approach. Woo! I have plenty, so I decided to select three tips I have seen work. Tip 1:
Dan, a product owner felt as if he was stuck between the proverbial rock and the hard place. His managers wanted “everything” in the next release.He knew the team couldn’t possibly deliver all of it. He hoped to get most of the features. He met with Polly, the agile project manager, and asked how much
Agile Transformation Secrets, Part 3: Principles Over Practices If you’re trying to use agile approaches or manage an agile transformation, consider these three mindsets for you, your project, and your organization: Manage for change (Part 1) Emphasize collaboration. (Part 2) Use principles, not practices, so teams can be autonomous and deliver what they need to
Agile Transformation Secrets, Part 2: Emphasize Collaboration If you’re trying to use agile approaches or manage an agile transformation, consider these three mindsets for you, your project, and your organization: Manage for change (Part 1) Emphasize collaboration. (this part) Use principles, not practices, so teams can be autonomous and deliver what they need to deliver.
Agile Transformation Secrets, Part 1: Manage for Change If you’re trying to use agile approaches or manage an agile transformation, consider these three mindsets for you, your project, and your organization: Manage for change (this installment). Emphasize collaboration. (I’ll send this in Part 2) Use principles, not practices, so teams can be autonomous and deliver
Three Secrets for Improvement by Subtraction Too often, when we change something, we add to our established practices. However, many changes succeed only when you subtract something. What will you stop? Here are three questions you might consider: Who needs information in what form? Who needs to work together? Who needs the work? Secret 1: