Blog: Agile & Business

Necessary Conditions for a Team

October 21, 2018

At the Lean Agile Open (an Open Space event) last Friday, October 19th, I was having lunch with Gwen Kestin (a great coach at Vanguard) and others. Gwen was talking about the necessary conditions for a Team before you start coaching them.  She mentioned someone who had come up with a list of about 6 […]

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Servant Leadership – one quote

October 21, 2018

There are two main things to say about a ScrumMaster. The SM is a servant leader. The SM is the impediment-remover-in-chief. With this latter one, we are saying that the SM is not the only one who can remove impediments (the rest of the Team, Managers, people outside the company could all help do that).  […]

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Dark Scrum – Some comments

October 7, 2018

We have been talking about this issue for years. Well, we do not entirely agree on what the issue is. Ron Jeffries calls it Dark Scrum. To quote (almost): “too often “Scrum” is used to oppress people”…and he explains that it was his aim that agile would make the world safe for programmers and testers. […]

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Scrum and Power

September 30, 2018

Many organizations are built around power.  It is an old old idea.  Power and hierarchy — I think I was told — goes back to the days of Babylonia.  Roughly 5,000 years ago.  And the birth of the city and of city-civilization.  They needed some organizing principles, so they adopted those. If one has a […]

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The Team and Fun

September 30, 2018

Long ago I took a course on Homo Ludens. Man playing. And the idea was that man is in his most natural state when playing. At least for people who innovate, I think this is true. It may also be true of children. It is not true of ascetics, or those who believe they earn […]

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Seven Actionable Ideas for NOW.

September 30, 2018

I gave the attached talk (see slides) to Agile Midlands last Thursday night. Enjoy! Agile Midlands – NOW ver2    

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How to Find an Agile Group

September 22, 2018

Maybe you are new to Agile or new to a new town. How do you find an agile group? Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo is one: Some example searches: “Charlotte Agile groups” “NYC Scrum groups” Other search terms might include different takes on the city, (maybe include state), and some related words, such as lean […]

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7 Actionable Ideas Now

September 8, 2018

This is my outline for a talk with Agile Columbia –  Sept 2018. I made some choices.  You might make different choices.  It certainly does not stand on its own, but I hope you can fill in the blanks pretty well.  Or ask. Start: Here are 7 ideas you can act on today.   Do […]

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The SM and Self-Organization

August 20, 2018

Let’s deal with a few Questions today. Question 1 Does the ScrumMaster facilitate self-organization? Yes. Question 2 What does that mean? It’s a bit complicated. First, many teams at first do not know how to self-organize.  So, the teaching of certain skills may require “less self-organization” at first. But then, the Team should start to […]

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Open Space Agility: Executive Action Team

August 12, 2018

Here is an idea that you can use immediately. Almost always, you have a group of people that you need or want to adapt Scrum or Agile. Open Space Agility will help you get them changed faster and better than any other method I know of. What is it? OSA is a set of ideas […]

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