Category Archives: Better Agile

Do we really believe in autonomy at work?

How autonomous should knowledge workers be?  A lot? If we believe this, where does this lead us?  That’s the theme of this post. Earlier the subject line of this post included ‘freedom.’  This word carries more emotional energy, and requires discussion of other issues.  Hence, the change. And do we, the workers and the managers […]

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Proposal: Learn about Open Agile Adoption

Imagine that we, the agile advocates, have agile going a little bit in our organization.  How do we get it more broadly adopted? One challenge is wanting everyone doing something that is consistent and reasonably professional.  (This could be any of several flavors of agile, but for now, imagine Scrum.)  We want this because of […]

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Proposal: Scaling Workshop

This is the first in a series on new ideas to make your practice of Agile more successful. Do a scaling workshop The idea is a 2 day workshop with the right people in your company, focused on the scaling topic. First, scaling can mean many different things, and in the workshop we like to […]

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Teams are More Important than Scaling

This is another take-away from the Southern Fried Agile last fall. Teams are more important than scaling. I am hearing a lot of talk about scaling.  Definitely a useful and important topic for some. Also, I am deeply concerned that we are missing a key point. Many people are. In general, we have not learned […]

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Scrum Master Course Toronto + Certified Scrum Toronto + Workshop – Impediment List

Certified Scrum Toronto | Scrum Master Course Toronto + Workshop Impediment List Here is what the Toronto course identified as impediments.  Not in any order (although understood that it must be ordered). Overlooking risks Big scope Team competence Too many defects Team changes Processes not clear Product owner involvement Under estimated Requirements not clear Requirement […]

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Making Change Happen

Updated: May 30, 2024. How do we make change happen? First, this is an interesting and somewhat difficult question. No one knows the complete answer. Change does happen, and people ascribe causes to why the change happened (or did not happen). The facts are very messy so it is hard to be sure, and hard to […]

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Managers : Impediments

It should not be confusing how to manage in Scrum (agile). Let’s put a scope on this. We are talking about the management of innovation, using Teams. Not the management of BAU or regular production or whatever your firm calls that. I am less sure these principles (below) apply in those cases, but I do […]

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What does the Executive Team do in Scrum?

In an earlier post, we described an Executive Team in a smallish company (aka an oversight group in a larger company).  And we described a simple situation.  For example, the oversight group is responsible for 8-10 initiatives. Or, basically, 8-10 Scrum teams.  For now, let’s make it simple, and imagine that each Scrum Team is […]

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Why are we doing Agile?

We just had Southern Fried Agile in Charlotte.  See SouthernFriedAgile.com I have 5 take-aways.  For today, the first one. Why are we doing this? We are not doing Agile for Agile’s sake. We are doing it because we think it will help. And the most important people to help are…. well, first, everyone.  Everyone at […]

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Impediments – Charlotte – Oct 2014

This the list that this class identified: Indecisive Little stakeholder engagement Started development late LOB changed strategic direction Assumptions Lack of Test Environment & Data Undefined risk Lack of communication Missing requirements Too many bugs No DOD Time constraints (this is not yet a actionable impediments…but an issue for analysis IMO) Backing into dates Unreasonable […]

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