Archives

How much should we sharpen the saw?

You probably know the classic story of the man sawing the tree. You walk up to him. You: “How’s it going?” Man: “Wow. It’s really hard. This is one big tree, and I have been working at it for hours now.” You: “Sounds tough. Why is it going so slowly?” Man: “Well, this is hard […]

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The biggest impediment

To start the New Year, perhaps we should focus on the biggest impediment. Now, of course, we don’t know the biggest impediment at your place of business, but I can tell you what I see at clients, and what makes sense to me, given human nature. In my view, it is human nature to feel, […]

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The Daily Scrum – a question

Srinivas sent me the following note: QUESTION: Thanks to Joe and all of the attendees — I have learned a lot from all of you. I have a simple question — in the Daily Scrum meeting — if I understood it correctly, team members are expected to answer the three questions to the team — […]

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Responsibility

In my last post, I talked about responsibility, or mentioned it. As I was walking my dog today, I was thinking of what I would say.   thought of the famous line from that movie: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” (Network) [This is a rather complicated allusion, so apologies […]

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Freedom

I have written about freedom before, but, as Rousseau said, man is born free and everywhere is in chains. It is a topic that bears repeated discussion. In business and in life, too many people want to think that they own other people. Other ‘resources’ or whatever they may call these people. These owners might […]

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How I teach – 1

For those who will teach and for some puzzled course attendees, I want to do a series of posts about how I teach. First, the goal is not to teach. Or, clearly, the goal is neither teaching nor learning, but results, more than just action, but actual results from action). Results for you, for your […]

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Release Planning

This is a short post to summarize my recommendations for Release Planning. First, release planning is what we do before we start Sprinting. It is where we plan the initial Product Roadmap and develop the initial ‘plan.’ It is pretty important. We do it just before we start doing Sprints. Some people believe one myth […]

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No man is an island, entire of itself

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

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

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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