I like industry conferences. Recently, I participated in Agile 2016, held this year in Atlanta. As I reflect on this trip, I’m amazed at how much value I got out of it. I count at least five ways this trip was beneficial. This feeling is consistent with other events I’ve participated in, be it Agile […]
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Across all industries, there is a tremendous desire for more innovation. Sadly, companies frequently suffer from a cultural habit that stymies creativity: people play the role of Devil’s advocate in a non-constructive, unidimensional fashion. New ideas face a constant barrage of negativity, and promoting them becomes a Herculean task that discourages but the most intrepid innovator. With
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All Agile coaches eventually face the stiff headwinds of resistance to change. Counter-intuitively, coaches themselves can trigger some of that resistance by inadvertently performing wide-scale identity theft. It is something I have done, and you may have too. This article explains what identity theft is, provides some concrete examples, and looks at a few approaches
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This article is the second of a series of two on boosting the effectiveness of Agile rituals. The first article emphasizes increasing people participation while this article focuses on meeting preparation. Preparation is important because a lack of it can result in long, boring, clumsy, ineffective rituals. Among other things, I think this is partly
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Let’s face it; many Agile teams are disappointed by how much time they spend in rituals. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, it shouldn’t be that way. A team can take many actions to shrink the amount of time it spends in rituals while simultaneously increasing their effectiveness and fostering better
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A fear often associated with self-organizing teams is the potential loss of focus on quality. Indeed, how does an organization ensure it produces a satisfactory level of quality when that responsibility is distributed among teams rather than centralized? Many organizations solve this issue by crafting and abiding by a Definition Of Done, or DoD for
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Executive support is often touted as one of the most important, if not the most important pre-condition for a successful organizational transformation, be it Agile or otherwise. I agree. However, the nature of that support is not frequently defined. Worse still, I believe it is for most part misunderstood, especially by the executives themselves. In
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Organizations new to Agile often think their work cannot possibly be broken down into smaller increments of value. In this article, I want to explore a way to get over these objections: a way that appeals to emotion as much as logic, a way that incorporates some gentle peer pressure via a comparison to the
Main Barrier To Iterative Development: Lack Of Imagination Read More »
It is said that the difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory. Although I believe this is true of a lot of things, one area that eludes this old saying is the practice of Lean and Agile. Practicality The theoretical differences between Lean and Agile are the frequent subject of
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This month, I present a collaboration with executive consultant and Agile master coach Mario Moreira. Recently, someone asked us if we thought that the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) used at Google and applied at Intel in the 1970s is compatible with the Agile mindset. Take a look at this Rick Klau presentation on “How
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