Invitation over imposition. This is at the heart of agility. Scratch that. It’s at the heart of being a sincere and empathetic human who believes in others and wants to make a difference. Unfortunately, I’m sure many of us have seen Scrum imposed on teams. They’re told to begin using sprints. They’re required to conduct …
Invitation Over Imposition: A Four Step Guide to Effective Change Read More »
Mike Cohn inspires a lot of my work. In fact, when I began this blog years back, Mike stopped by and offered a piece of advice on my first blog post that has stuck with me. He said he’d often track the number of questions he’d ask and compare it to the number of statements …
I think many of us have been going about this predictability thing all wrong. Don’t misunderstand. It’s not for lack of trying, and we’ve had all the right intentions. Still, in many cases, we’ve done more harm than good, and I’m just as much to blame as anyone else. A colleague had much the same …
I’ve been mentoring a group of young Scrum Masters for the last seven months, and recently one of them asked me a question: How do I foster trust within my team? Immediately, two thoughts came to mind: But why? Whether family, friends, or colleagues, we’re surrounded by people most times of the day, and our …
I’ve said it before, and it’s worth repeating. What civilians call agility the Marine Corps calls leading Marines. I’ve compared my decade in the Corps to my experiences as an agile coach in a pair of blog posts here and here, and I think it’s time to revisit this theme. Today we’ll focus on the …
A Medium follower asked me a few questions recently: What’s the difference between a Scrum Master and agile coach? How can they both be involved in Scrum? Why is it seen as a natural ‘progression’ to move from Scrum Master to agile coach? These are popular questions, and I’ve run across many–maybe too many, in …
What’s the Difference Between a Scrum Master and Agile Coach? Read More »
Teams that don’t deliver working product frequently aren’t agile. I hold firmly to this truth for many reasons. For example, how can we iterate on a product that isn’t real? Wouldn’t you agree that continuous improvement is at the heart of agility? So if the product isn’t real, how can we be sure we’re learning …
Six Reasons Agile Teams Deliver Frequently And Why It Matters Read More »
What’s my plan? That’s a question I was asked recently. It occurred to me in that moment that I didn’t have one. Sure. I had a vision, I knew the next few steps, and I knew where I wanted my teams to get. However, the longer term was fuzzy, and it depended on how a …
Editor’s Note: Tanner here. I’m usually the one doing the writing but not today. I ran into Sjoerd a few days back. Awesome guy, great writer, and he has some refreshing perspectives on agility and Scrum Mastery. Also, he’s been gratuitous enough to share his thoughts on my blog with all of you today. For more …
In my last blog post, I wrote about the side effects of manager as Product Owner. In it, I talked about how I believe these roles should be filled by different people. So if the manager isn’t directing the work, what’s s/he doing? How does a manager help his/her people when they’re distributed across multiple …
