Blog: Agile & Business

Real Scrum vs Easy Scrum

May 29, 2018

In the first course (almost always the CSM course), I have people wanting, in simple terms, one of two things. With little compromise between. One: Real Scrum. By this I mean everything in the Scrum Guide plus all the better patterns around that. Two: Easy Scrum (aka Half-baked Scrum) This is Scrum compromised quite a […]

Read More »

What is Agile Transformation?

May 28, 2018

Problem What is Agile Transformation? Abid Quereshi said this recently: ‘”Agile transformation” is another one of our made-up terms like Agile BA, Agile Tester, Agile PM and Agile Coach.’ By this he means, as he explained, that people use a term, but do not agree on its meaning, or that the meaning is so broad as to […]

Read More »

The Fuller Picture of the Scrum Team

May 5, 2018

What does the Scrum Team look like in context? In ScrumLand there are many many pictures of this.  Here is one that is a bit different. In this case, the context is not the process but other things and other people. See here: One could start many places in describing this picture.  I’ll start this […]

Read More »

New HBR article… Agile at Scale

April 19, 2018

Thanks for Rijon Erickson, we can link you to a great HBR article now: Agile at Scale by Rigby, Sutherland, and Noble. https://hbr.org/2018/05/agile-at-scale Enjoy!

Read More »

The Impediment List

April 19, 2018

The most important thing a ScrumMaster does is remove impediments. This is easy to say, since anything that needs to be fixed or changed we define as an impediment. What is an Impediment? So, just about anything can be an impediment. So, how do we define an impediment?  One way: Anything that is slowing down […]

Read More »

Alternatives to scaling

April 17, 2018

Here is an email I recently sent. (Slightly modified.)  Said quickly, but some key points. *** Hi all, Just wanted to share these ideas quickly.  Some may find them new, and some people may not. First: In this context I am defining scaling as 3 teams working together on one product. The reason we want […]

Read More »

The Advanced CSM Course (A-CSM)

April 14, 2018

The main goal of the course is to help you become more effective so you can then help your team and organization improve faster, and improve significantly — such as to 5-10x more Velocity with higher quality and more fun for the team. The specific rules of the A-CSM course requires us to spend most […]

Read More »

A resource for Business Analysts

March 25, 2018

Here is a new resource for business analysts. In general, this is a very important skill set and we do not give it sufficient attention in Agile, in my opinion. Yes, there are issues. The people who have been business analysts are good people. Yes, we do not want a special role (especially as a […]

Read More »

Stupid Impediment Tricks – 1

March 24, 2018

I wanted to review some “obvious” ideas about impediments. Here’s a starting blog post on that theme. No problem is the problem. A lot of teams and people want to have the idea that they are “as good as it gets,” and it may be true that they are very good. In the Lean community […]

Read More »

The Agile Challenge – Success criteria

March 18, 2018

A winning entry must of course include some description that explains that your team used Agile. It also needs to explicitly or implicitly include an argument that shows you were more successful because of Agile, and that Agile was at least one of the key causes of success. Any flavor of Agile is OK: DSDM, XP, […]

Read More »