One Easy Way to Improve Your Next Retrospective
The very first Agile Coach I ever had taught me the practice of using Norm Kerth’s Prime Directive to start my retrospectives. Though I haven’t always used it, when I do…
9 Pitfalls of Using Agile Tools
Most teams who use Agile or Scrum today use some type of online Agile tool. While I do believe there are some benefits of using agile tools, I think the…
Help Your Agile Team Overcome Learned Helplessness
Learned Helplessness There is a well-established process for domesticating young elephants that demonstrates the process of learned helplessness everywhere including organizations and agile teams. When elephants are young they are…
Will Your Agile Transformation Improve Employee Engagement?
Several years ago, I wrote an article on the importance of Employee Engagement and it's relationship to Agile Methodologies. In the last week, I read a newly published article from…
Agile Projects are More Successful than Traditional Projects
I've recently obtained the 2018 Standish Group Chaos Study results which show Waterfall and Agile project success and failure rates. It should come as no surprise that Agile projects are…
Using Reality-Based Forecasting in Agile Project Management
Introduction Traditional approaches for estimating projects are ineffective and as a result, no one believes or trusts them. Worse, traditional projects are frequently on schedule right up until they are…
For High Performing Teams, Stop Assigning People to Multiple Teams
In an effort to do more with less, most organizations take their best people and assign them to multiple projects. This approach rarely leads to high performing teams and actually…
The 5 Vital Relationships That All Agile Leaders Need (part 2)
In my previous post, I introduced the first 3 of 5 relationships that I consider vital for Agile Leaders, or leaders in any context. This post contains the fourth and fifth…
The 5 Vital Relationships That All Agile Leaders Need (part 1)
Success as an Agile Leader is not about Working Harder If you find yourself working harder than ever but not getting the results you want, perhaps more hard work is…
How to Use the Scrum Framework with Distributed Teams
In my previous article, I argued that using a distributed team with the Scrum Framework was a bad idea and advised against it. There is sufficient information to show that…