Category Archives: Better Agile

Managers: How to have break-out, outstanding Teams. #1

The Agile community is not generating enough high-performing teams. Managers: I put this to you.  We could put it to the SMs, the POs, the Scrum Teams, the CEO, etc. So, why so few break-out Teams? Well, to be honest, I do not care much why we are NOT having this success — what I […]

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Managers: Scrum can help you now!

Here is the situation for many managers: We need more productivity now! There is TONS of opportunity, but we can’t get to it. We cannot hire people (fast enough).  We want to retain people more. Our staff want a nicer situation (or they will…) Again, this means that we need to use the staff we […]

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Agile-Carolinas Mtg: Waterfall vs Agile – key discussion points

Agile started as a reaction to Waterfall (cf. definition of waterfall in Dr. Royce’s paper). Perhaps not so much a reaction to Royce’s Waterfall, but to how Waterfall was being played in the wild. The reaction was expressed many ways, but a simple short explanation is in the Agile Manifesto (4 lines) and the Agile […]

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Agile Carolinas meeting: Helping Agile Managers – an open space-like event. July 1

Next Aile Carolinas  meeting.  In an Open Space-like format.  2 hours. Topic / Theme: Helping Agile Managers / Leaders Date: July 1, Thursday, at 5:00 pm EDT, for 2 hours. Format: Online (Zoom) This will be done in an Open Space way. We will have simultaneous sessions (break outs) on Zoom. Here are some questions […]

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Webinar: Discussing 7 Scrum Patterns

This is another in our Webinar Series.  1 hour. Topic: Discussing 7 Scrum Patterns Date: August 10th, Tuesday, at 1:30 pm EDT, for 1 hour. Format: Online. As you know, the idea of patterns has been around for a long time.  And became more popular after architect Christopher Alexander wrote the book: A Pattern Language. […]

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Webinar: Alternatives to Scaling 3 Teams

This is another in our Webinar Series.  1 hour. Topic: Alternatives to Scaling 3 Teams Date: July 20th, at 4 pm EDT, for 1 hour. Format: Online. There are many definitions of “scaling”. For now, we are defining scaling as putting 3 Teams together to work closely on a big, high coupling – high cohesion […]

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Webinar: Scrum Patterns

This is another in our Webinar Series.  1 hour. Topic: Scrum Patterns (Improve Now) Date: June 17th, at 2pm EDT, for 1 hour. Online. We will introduce the idea of Scrum Patterns, and discuss some background. And then mainly discuss 10 key patterns that can make your Team better now. These are from the patterns […]

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James Coplien / Scrum Patterns

On April 28, 2021, we had an Agile Carolinas meeting. Very large group (up to 90 I think), from many parts of the world. Certainly Europe and the US were well-represented. And James Coplien gave a wonderful talk on Scrum Patterns and related topic.  To be brief, Coplien is the co-author of A Scrum Book, […]

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Webinar: 2 Patterns for Managers

This is another in our Webinar Series.  1 hour. One: Impediment Removal Team The basics of the idea are simple. You form a Scrum Team with Managers.  The job of the team is to fix impediments for a group of Teams (say, 5 to 20 teams).  In the Product Backlog of the IRT is a […]

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Webinar: Managers and Team self-managing

This is another in our $5 Webinar Series.  1 hour. The new Scrum Guide says that Teams should be self-managing. And Jeff Sutherland says managers are essential in Scrum. Broadly we know that there are some “poorly trained” managers, at least from an agile viewpoint.  And others find there are good managers out there (at […]

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