Blog: Agile & Business

No man is an island, entire of itself

November 5, 2010

In summers past, I have gone whale-fishing from Nantucket island. Well, not I, although I did go to beautiful Nantucket, as did Ishmael, but they never called me Ishmael. I have set out from Nantucket, as they did in former days, intent to catch a whale. Albeit mine was a metaphorical whale. So, you see […]

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On Sustainable Pace

October 29, 2010

I was just at the Agile Tour at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. It was a very good event. (Kudos to Catherine Louis and the other organizers!) Laurie Williams, who is a great person and a great Agile researcher, has done some work recently. I should use her words for it but don’t have […]

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A real person in a good team

October 13, 2010

Some people take the view that a person (often themselves) will be lost in a team, and, to be fair, this can happen. There are bosses and there are teammates who want you to conform, to submit, to lose your identity to a meaningful degree, but in a real and good team, the opposite occurs. […]

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The importance of teams

October 10, 2010

As I teach Scrum and Lean-Agile classes, I often meet people who don’t understand teams. Often this is true for some of the smartest and most capable people. Why? I think there are many answers. One is that they have been taught the single-leader team discipline. (This is the phrase that Katzenbach and Smith use […]

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JIT Knowledge Creation

October 2, 2010

This is our business. JIT (just-in-time) knowledge creation. (It is not just-in-time knowledge management.) Why? And why is it so important? Well, ultimately the answer is because people are important. Or maybe it is better to say we respect the customer, the firm’s shareholders. What do I mean, you say? Let’s start from the beginning. […]

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Where to start?

September 28, 2010

Some of us have been doing Lean-Agile-Scrum for awhile now, and we forget that others are just starting. So, where does one start? The first answer is to start from where you are. One thing this means is to start with the impediments one has today, and you use Scrum to help tell you, “What […]

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Fearless Change

September 8, 2010

Mary Lynn Manns is visiting Agile-Carolinas in Charlotte next week. As many of you will know, Dr. Manns is the co-author of Fearless Change, along with Linda Rising. This is a great book about getting people to adopt a new idea (eg, lean-agile-scrum). So, I wanted to take this opportunity, in thanks, to praise the […]

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We can’t go any faster Captain!

September 5, 2010

With many Scrum teams, they reach the point of attacking all the obvious impediments. And the impediments, at least in their minds, are all fixed. And they say, in effect, “we can’t make it go any faster Captain!” As that actor with the Scottish accent would say in the original Star Trek. What’s wrong with […]

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Release Planning & the Early Warning System

September 4, 2010

Building complex innovative products is, of course, hard. In that context, what is the purpose of Release Planning in Scrum/Agile? I will not provide a complete explanation here, but will give a few key ideas. A consensus view of the ‘same’ elephant. I want all the team members to see the whole product and to […]

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Respect

August 19, 2010

I just led a course in Charleston mostly for people working in/on government or military projects. I was asked many good questions, and I was not able, in the time allotted (two days) to answer them all as well as the questions deserved. I have other clients who also have very difficult situations to deal […]

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