Blog: Agile & Business

Stop Starting, Start Finishing

May 21, 2016

The phrase in the title is a well-known Agile phrase, but perhaps not well-enough known. In one way, it is saying: minimize WIP. Work-in-process or work-in-progress. In another way, it is saying what my friend Mike Vizdos says: Focus. #Deliver. _____________________________________ But let me tell a story that gives a different meaning. A few months […]

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The Team sucks, the Backlog sucks, the Done Done sucks! I know! Let’s scale that!

May 21, 2016

I just led a discussion with Agile Charleston on this topic. The idea for this topic comes from a talk by Mike Cottmeyer at the Scrum Gathering in Orlando. I agreed with Mike that these three are three of the most common problems with teams, and they are fundamental. (One might argue that X is […]

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Scrum 101

May 15, 2016

Here is the slide deck I used in the talk with the Agile Halifax group. Scrum101.key You can see slides from other talks I have had here. Enjoy!    

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Scrum 201 Course – Why?

May 2, 2016

Why the ‘Scrum 201’ course? Problem: This course addresses two problems. (A) how to get more success from Scrum (B) how to advance your career We are finding far too many teams are only getting 20% or so improvement with Scrum. This is by far too low. One way to address this problem is more […]

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Jeff Sutherland Google Talk (2014) on “Scrum” (book)

May 1, 2016

Here is a fairly recent Google Talk by Jeff Sutherland. (Late 2014.)  The talk gives some key ideas from his recent book, “Scrum.” The talk is long, about an hour, but you can stop it any time.

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Getting Started with Scrum

April 29, 2016

Let’s talk about the basic standard patterns in getting started with Scrum. (We have talked about these ideas before, and so we have many, many coaches and advisors.) Start a pilot team This also means pull together a team with the best possible criteria for success. These criteria are worth reviewing in more detail later, […]

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Lean Agile Open – April 15, 2016.

April 16, 2016

[Ed. Note: This was written 4/16/2016.  We have had many Open Space events since 2016.] We had a great event in Charlotte yesterday, and I hope you did not miss it. Self-organizing people did the best they could (which is actually a lot) to learn as much as they could with other smart people about Lean […]

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The A3 Approach to Kaizen

April 3, 2016

In every class, I teach the A3 approach to Kaizen. Kaizen is usually translated into English as ‘continuous improvement.’ In Scrum that means ‘removing impediments.’ The first thing to note is that it is an approach.  It is a method, with certain values and principles, and the fundamentals of the approach are more important than […]

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Scrum 201 Course: Agile-Scrum to the next level

March 31, 2016

I have a Scrum 201 course coming up in Atlanta. This is important, needed and useful. Why? Why Scrum 201? Lots of people have tried Scrum and everyone gets some reasonable benefit. But, you may not have gotten nearly the benefits possible.  So, the purpose of this course is to enable you to get much […]

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List of Courses and Workshops V12

March 31, 2016

Some of you may have seen our prior list of courses and workshops. Scrum 201 was added — we did this one year ago with Jeff Sutherland, and the need for it continues to grow. Many of these courses and workshops are available publicly, or could be scheduled anywhere if there is some interest.  Five […]

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