Category Archives: Better Agile

Dark Scrum – Some comments

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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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Agile Transformation: Don’t forget the Team

In Life and business one always asks oneself: what is real and what is not real?  What is important, and what is not important? This is hard. Well, parts are easy.  I am not interested in watching a Canasta game by random people (how many readers know the Canasta card game?), BUT I am very […]

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Velocity: How is it useful?

So, apparently, people are doing Scrum and not tracking their Velocity.  Why? One key reason: they do not see how useful it is. Here are some explanations. Helps the SM focus The Velocity is the key metric for the ScrumMaster (SM). The SM should increase the Velocity 100% in the first 6 months. (This is […]

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