Your Team Is Neurodiverse. Your Ways of Working Should Be Too.
Someone recently wrote to me: ““I wish there were a version of Scrum for neurodivergent people.”” That sentence stayed with me. I do not think we need another version of S...
Articles
On leadership, product, technology, coaching, and organizational change.
AI Is Not Replacing Scrum Masters. Bad Role Design Is.
Many organizations complain that Scrum Masters do not create enough change. Then you look at the role they designed and realize: change was never really allowed. That is why the...
The Pole Challenge: The Workshop Exercise That Makes Team Dynamics Visible
Some workshop exercises look almost too simple to be useful. The Pole Challenge is one of them. You bring a team together, give them a pole, and ask them to lower it to the grou...
AI Will Help You Build the Wrong Thing Faster
Right now, almost every company is trying to “do something with AI.” AI copilots. AI-generated presentations. AI coding assistants. AI pilots everywhere. Executives are under pr...
Why Companies Keep Turning Great Engineers Into Bad Managers
I keep seeing the same pattern in companies: the best engineers get promoted out of the work they’re brilliant at, then everyone wonders why leadership gets worse and technic...
Many Organizations Accidentally Train People to Stop Thinking
Many organizations accidentally train people to stop thinking. Not intentionally. Most leaders I meet genuinely want motivated, proactive, innovative people. They want teams tha...
Most Companies Don’t Want Feedback. They Want Confirmation.
Most organizations say they value experimentation, innovation, customer feedback, and learning. But if you observe what actually happens inside many companies, something very di...
Stop Running Your Agile Transformation Like a Secret Change Club
Most agile transformations don’t fail because “people resist change”. They fail because we design the change in a way that produces resistance – by running it like a Secret Chan...
How to Start an Agile Transformation as an Agile Coach
Why I start with people, observation, and evidence – and how that speeds everything up. Most agile transformations start the same way: pick a team. Train them. Coach them. Roll...
Is TDD Slower? Only If You Ignore the Second Half of the Race
This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Beyond Testing – The TDD Series[Image] Beyond Testing – The TDD Series • If You Think TDD Means Automated Tests, You’re Missing the Poi...
Do You Know Any Exercises That Make Agile Values Stick After The Training?
Yes – the most effective workshop games reinforce agile values long after the session by creating emotional experiences that participants remember, practice, and reference in re...
The Hidden Wins of TDD: Focus, Sleep, and the Joy of Getting It Right
This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Beyond Testing – The TDD Series[Image] Beyond Testing – The TDD Series • If You Think TDD Means Automated Tests, You’re Missing the Poi...
You’re Killing Breakthroughs Before They Even Begin
Innovation collapses at the portfolio layer – long before the work starts Let me start with a few scenes you’ve probably lived through: • Approval for an innovation initiative r...
How do I make agile values stick after the workshop?
One great way to make agile values stick after the workshop is by creating emotionally memorable experiences that people practice together, remember later, and recognize in thei...
What Simple Exercises Stop People From Zoning Out In A Workshop?
The fastest way for trainers to boost engagement is to use short, plug-and-play experiential activities that require almost no setup and immediately pull participants into activ...
The 75-Year-Old Motivation Study Every Leader Still Gets Wrong
If you ever needed proof that managers and employees live in two different realities, here it is: the top motivators managers believe in, and the top motivators employees actual...
Why do participants lose attention during corporate workshops after 20 minutes, and how can I keep them engaged?
Participants lose attention after 20 minutes because the human brain is not designed for long periods of passive listening, and engagement rises only when people do something – ...
The Strange Discovery of Intrinsic Motivation – And Why Leaders Still Get It Wrong
Most leaders today talk about motivation as if it were obvious: you set targets, attach rewards, maybe add pressure, and magically people perform. But the idea that humans do gr...
What are the best interactive exercises for agile leadership workshops?
The best interactive exercises for agile leadership workshops are short, experiential games that mirror real leadership challenges and can be debriefed into concrete workplace b...
The Motivation Gap – Why Leaders Double Down on the Wrong Things
It’s almost impressive how consistently managers get motivation wrong. Ask them what drives people, and you hear the usual list: good pay, stable contracts, career opportunities...
Build Trust to Ignite Motivation
Every leader wants a motivated team. People who care. Who take initiative. Who don’t need to be chased for every deadline. So we try: pep talks, bonuses, team events, motivatio...
The Velocity Cult
(A modern corporate fable about rewarding A while hoping for B) Let me tell you about Sophie. She joined bright-eyed, caffeinated, and carrying just enough imposter syndrome t...
Why Most Teams Don’t Do TDD — And What It Costs Them
Let’s be brutally honest: TDD isn’t new. It’s been around for decades. It’s praised by some of the most respected minds in software. It’s baked into agile, XP, and even many...
Stop Managing Dependencies. Start Eliminating Them.
Let’s start with a blunt truth: Managing dependencies is a trap. (Yes, I’m looking at you, PI Planning boards with your red strings and sticky-note spiderwebs. 🔍) These boards...
The Real Cost Driver Has Changed
Once upon a time – not that long ago – product development was a slow, stately dance. A new idea emerged every few years, maybe once a decade. Companies would then spend years p...
Beyond Story Points: A Practical Guide for Grown‑Up Agile Teams
Story points aren’t the problem. They were created with good intent. A soft way to guide planning without the stress and politics of time estimates. Ron Jeffries, one of the or...
So You Think You’re Agile?
The Ladder That Separates the Pretenders from the Practitioners““We work in two-week sprints.” Cool. That’s not agility.” I’ve heard it a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. Teams...
Inside the Red-Green-Refactor Cycle: A Ritual for Flow, Feedback, and Fearlessness
Let’s not sugarcoat it: Most codebases are slow, fragile, and painful to change not because developers are lazy or unskilled—but because the system is wired against momentum. E...
The Story Point Illusion: Why "Per Person Velocity" is a Corporate Fairy Tale
The first time I heard someone talk about “per person story points,” I laughed. Surely, it was a joke. Like someone suggesting we measure teamwork by how many push-ups each pers...
If You Think TDD Means Automated Tests, You’re Missing the Point
This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Beyond Testing – The TDD Series Beyond Testing – The TDD Series• If You Think TDD Means Automated Tests, You’re Missing the Point • Insi...
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