Blog

Read about agility, leadership, innovation.

Your budgeting kills agility!

Your budgeting kills agility!

Agility is much more than teaching teams to deliver in sprints. If your goal is to tackle the challenges of today, you'd better become agile on all levels. Traditional budgeting often works somewhat like this: 👏 Management decides to pursue a business opportunity🤦...

Are you afraid of user feedback?

Are you afraid of user feedback?

While sprint reviews or system demos are meant to focus on feedback from users, so that you can deliver more value… …some PMs and POs are afraid that user feedback could challenge their plans/backlogs. What I see play out almost every week is the struggle to adopt an...

Have the damn guts to walk out on a meeting!

Have the damn guts to walk out on a meeting!

Take responsibility for your own productive time! Agility is about autonomy. Autonomy means you‘re responsible for your time. Sitting through meetings just because somebody invited you is not a responsible use of your time. 👉 Have the courage to decline meeting...

Transparency is damn misunderstood by many!

Transparency is damn misunderstood by many!

🚨 Transparency doesn't mean that management can see everything the team does. Transparency means: 👉 The team can see everything management does. 👉 The team can see everything it does itself (reflection). Transparency is supposed to EMPOWER teams, not to control them!...

Leadership is a relationship 🙌

Leadership is a relationship 🙌

Leadership is not something one person does! It's a relationship between leader and follower. A leader without a follower is not a leader. If you want to be a great leader, ask the people who you want to follow you what they expect from you. Then act accordingly....

The simple 7-step guide for awesome Retrospectives 🙌

The simple 7-step guide for awesome Retrospectives 🙌

Retrospectives often end up as “letting off steam” or “endlessly discussing problems” events. That’s not helpful. Retros should help a team continuously improve! They should feel positive and have impact 🚀 Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough;...

What makes or breaks an Agile Transformation?

What makes or breaks an Agile Transformation?

Is it the framework you pick? Is it the tools you use? Is it how many teams dutifully exercise their sprints? I often see significant focus on choosing a scaling framework, teaching people how to do method xyz and picking "agile" tools. 🤔🤨🧐 But that is only...

How do agile teams rehearse?

How do agile teams rehearse?

"An important success factor for bands are rehearsals and sound checks to deliver a good performance. How do agile project teams "rehearse"?" This was a wonderful question from the audience at my talk "Music & Agility". I want to reply with this article. When...

The Surprising Benefits of Walking Meetings

The Surprising Benefits of Walking Meetings

Who said that meetings have to happen in a room or at a desk? Like with so many things in life we hardly ask about why we do meetings the way we do. And there is a lot to be said about meetings, but I want to focus on one innovative technique today: walking meetings....

Why Agile Transformations Fail

Why Agile Transformations Fail

So many companies struggle with their move to agility - why is that? Chances are you know or are part of a company whose agile transformation got stuck half-way and failed to deliver the big promises of agility. At this point you may doubt whether agility really works...