Blog: Agile & Business

Courses and Workshops we offer

July 19, 2014

Here is a list of all the lean – agile – scrum courses and workshops we offer.  We do these both publicly and in-house. Course and Workshop Offerings Ver10 This is not a complete list, but gives a good overview. We will update this listing from time to time. Of course we are happy to […]

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The Truth: Scrum is Not Easy!

July 11, 2014

May I tell the truth? I am a trainer, and people come to my courses.  And often they want an easy answer.  A magic answer that is not disturbing, or bothersome, but is in every way good, easy, friendly and just better. In other words, they come to change, but they don’t want to change.  […]

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Scaling Whitepaper

July 11, 2014

We have started a scaling whitepaper.  It will go through many iterations.  Now version 5. Getting Starting with ScalingVer5 Please comment on how you think this paper should evolve, and which key questions this paper should address. Thanks.

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Impediments – Charlotte Course July 2014

July 10, 2014

In the Charlotte course, the following impediments were identified.  These came from different people and were expressed in different ways.  I copied what they said.  So, for example, sometimes a “…, lack of” is implied. No one knows what done looks like Missed stakeholders Poor or non-existent planning One release per year (mentality) Technology Undefined […]

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Why Managers Should Crave Agile

June 23, 2014

One idea in the Agile community is that with Agile, we do not need managers anymore. For those of us who have had Dilbert managers, this is a happy thought. But actually, a silly thought.  Because even pretty good managers add value and we should have good managers.  And ‘good’ means not only morally sound, […]

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EPMO for a Smaller Company

June 22, 2014

In Waterfall we might need something else, but in Agile, what do we want from an Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO)?  If we have a relatively small company (total employees near 1,000, innovation group near 100).  (Obviously, if the company were 300,000 people, it would be a different game.) Let me discuss this in 7 […]

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Impediments – Charlotte

June 20, 2014

These are the impediments the Charlotte group identified today. Some of these need a ‘lack of.’ Culture, company politics Missed requirements Team motivation Competing priorities Lack of mgmt support Insufficient expertise Not enough senior support Budget constraints Lack of funding Undefined requirements Poor planning Missed stakeholders Poor training Resources not allowed to focus Requirement clarity […]

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Impediment List: Toronto

June 3, 2014

We just completed a CSM course in Toronto. Here are the impediments they identified, although some are phrased in a positive way. Eg, for some you need to add “…, lack of.” This list, as with others here, supports the idea of a public impediment list.  The real issue is ‘fixing impediments regularly and aggressively.”  […]

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What is a Real Team?

May 26, 2014

I recommend you read “The Discipline of Teams” by Katzenbach and Smith. See HBR.com.  This is an article; they also wrote a book with the same title. Their original book was The Wisdom of Teams.  All recommended. In the article, they give a short definition of a real team. And they distinguish carefully between a […]

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Metrics and Managers

May 25, 2014

Dan Greening gave an excellent talk about some aspects of metrics at the Scrum Gathering in New Orleans in early May 2014.  Go here to download his presentation: http://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/events/global-gatherings/2014/new-orleans-2014/presentations  (You must at least be a member of ScrumAlliance to have access to that page…sorry.) Dan inspired me to discuss metrics. First point: Managers like metrics. This […]

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