Let the Values Guide Your Agile Transformation

No organisation can control their competitors or customers; we need to remember this when we’re coaching people new to agile. Organisations can control what they produce and how they go about producing it. By looking at the values in the agile manifesto, we can see the lessons that need to be learned.

An Extroverts Journey Away from Oversharing

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a 4-day agile training course. Most of this course was aimed at people entirely new to agile, so I found myself holding my tongue. A lot. I didn’t want to disrupt the flow, appear like a know-it-all, nor be disrespectful to the trainers.

Six Marcus Aurelius Quotes for Better Scrum

The universe is change, life is an opinion

The agile manifesto talks about embracing change for the customer’s competitive advantage but doesn’t give much advice on how to embrace change; the Scrum Guide does though. In the sprint review the Scrum team and stakeholders review what has changed in their environment and consider how that is going to affect them. Based on these changes they may choose to alter the Product Backlog so that they can take advantage of new opportunities. It is this preparation at the end of one sprint that has the Scrum Team ready in the next.

Everything good in life comes from change. You don’t need to fear any change that occurs because you know that by the end of the sprint you will have come together to consider and discuss those changes, and turn them into positive opportunities. Your process is prepared for change to happen, and therefore you can handle anything that life throws at you.

Ten daily reflections for agile leaders

Whether you’re a coach, scrum master, manager, or any kind of agile leader, it is important to take some time to see how well you’re doing and think about how you can improve. After all, we expect teams to be having retrospectives so we should be having them for ourselves. Here are ten reflections for you to think about at the end of each work day.

What I’ve learned from a decade of journalling

I have tried keeping diaries, having digital notes, and writing marginalia, since I was a teenager. Around the age of 30 I discovered bullet journalling and it changed how I have kept notes ever since. I no longer stay true to the original system of bullet journalling as over the years I’ve kept what works and ditched what doesn’t. After ten years of pretty solid daily journalling, these are the things I’ve learned about what works for me.

Shorten Your Backlogs

I see little difference between the techniques used by productivity thought leaders to manage a to do list and those recommended for managing a product backlog. Both of these lists can become unwieldy if they are not managed well. I’ve seen cases of both lists and backlogs becoming an impossibly long wish list of ideas that are never going to be implemented, and the owner of that list knows it. Whether you’re thinking about your to do list or a product backlog, keeping a limit on the list length is important.

Rotating Flipcharts Facilitation Technique

There are times when facilitating a big group of people is necessary. One of the hardest things a facilitator faces is trying to keep a group of people on track and on time. Trying to keep more than ten people on track and on time is hard enough, but double that and you could quickly find yourself in facilitation hell. If you have a set of topics that you want to discuss and include everyone in, Rotating Flipcharts can be a really useful facilitation technique that breaks a large group into smaller ones and still ensure the groups communicate with each other.

Five Questions for Making Decisions

Every day we rely upon our habits over actively making decisions, and on the whole for very good reasons. From an evolutionary perspective the cost of a decision is high; spending the energy and time to make countless decisions every a day is impractical. Like lots of our instincts that have been great for survival historically, they’re not great for life in the twenty first century. As technology propels us forward faster and faster, making a poor decision can mean finding ourselves off course by miles. Here are five questions to help you be more mindful about the decisions you want to make consciously.

ADKAR Change Management Model

ADKAR is a goal oriented change management model for individuals and organisations to help guide them through changes and create lasting change. As both an agile coach and a personal coach, I find this model incredibly useful. This is something that we can all use ourselves in our work and personal lives to help form new habits.

Story Points Estimation for the Benefit of the Team

I’ve heard as many explanations of story points as teams I’ve worked with. I’ve seen a team use equations to get from T-shirt sizing to story points to time prediction. Another team I worked with estimated user stories in story points and estimated sub-tasks (hello there, Jira) in hours. When I ask a team why is it that they estimate in story points, the explanation I typically hear is, “We’re an agile team.” In an agile environment we should be questioning what the value of doing everything we do, and we shouldn’t overlook estimation in our inquiries.