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 […]
What’s Your North Star? Read More »
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
Breaking the status quo as Scrum Master Read 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
Practical Advice for Managers in an Agile Shop Read More »
Let’s try something different today. I’d like to tell you a story. To do it justice, I won’t write about it. Instead, I’ll share a video where I told this story to an agile group here in Silicon Valley, and it began as I wrestled with several questions: Can data help our teams improve?
What Metrics Will My Team Find Useful? Read More »
Words are hard. They shouldn’t be, but they are. We each internalize a definition of a word, and more oft than not, our internal definition conflicts with someone else’s. Even ancient Greek philosophers like Epictetus faced this problem offering this advice: First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak. Today, let’s talk
Why Process and Efficiency Are Terrible Words Read More »
We’ve begun experimenting with Large-Scale Scrum, or LeSS, and thus far, it’s been an interesting journey. I eluded to this experiment with LeSS in Two Principles for Scaling Any Agile Approach, and I also gave a bit of background into where we are in our agile evolution. The abridged version is we’re several years into a
Should You Experiment with LeSS? Read More »
Today, I wanted to talk about Large Scale Scrum, or LeSS. We’ve begun experimenting with it in our organization, and I wanted to share my experiences thus far. However, I felt I couldn’t. It felt premature. Before I could tell that story, I first needed to explain where we are, how we got there, and
Two Principles for Scaling Any Agile Approach Read More »
Too often, we emphasize the name of a thing over the potential outcome of the thing. We assume that when we exercise our understanding of the agile terrain via terminology that others have the same, rich mental models we do. I’m also sure many of us feel that using agile terminology lends us a bit
The Map Is Not The Territory Read More »
Several weeks ago, I wrote about what to look for in a good Scrum Master, and today, I’d like to have a similar discussion about the team. More specifically, let’s talk about what makes for a high-performing team. It’s a common term, and it conjures up different images for different people. If someone were to
Is Mine a High-Performing Team? Read More »
Books like Mike Cohn’s Succeeding with Agile and Henrik Kniberg’s Scrum and XP from the Trenches were two of the first books I read as I began my agile journey. These books were useful to teach me about Scrum, but Scrum is simple to understand. People though? They’re a challenge. As Ronika Lewis eloquently put it: The
The Best Books About Scrum Aren’t About Scrum Read More »
