Blog
Read about agility, leadership, innovation. Benefit from 20 years of global hands-on agile experience.
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...
💥 The rocket exploded. So why did SpaceX pop champagne?
("The rocket exploded. So why did SpaceX pop champagne?" is a quote from The New York Times) I know many leaders who wouldn't have congratulated their people on the explosion of a big project on launch day. The quality of good leadership is to recognize your role and...
Without a goal, Sprint Plannings are wasted time 😳
Sprints need a goal! Just handing out unconnected stories to developers is NOT agile. Product Owners are not only responsible to create and have a product vision, they're also responsible to COMMUNICATE that vision to the developers. 🛑 Stop handing out tasks to...
Almost done – how to ruin your agility with unfinished user stories at the end of a sprint in Scrum!
What to do with an almost finished story at the end of the sprint? Finish it? Carry it over? Put it back? Count 90% of the story points? 100%? 0%? We cannot predict the future. Unexpected things will happen and void our plans – no matter how thorough we plan. That is...
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
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....
Agile Requirements Game (aka Draw the Requirements Game)
Teaching teams the importance of face-to-face communication, feedback loops and a close relation with the client can be hard. Games help to feel and understand why this is so important. This article teaches you a little agile game you can play with your teams and coachees.
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...
Scrum vs Kanban
Don‘t fret too much over the right agile framework for your company. Focus on an agile culture instead. Establishing an agile culture is the key to success. Without it, none of the frameworks will deliver decisive improvements. Matthias Orgler (Agile Coach)
Is Scrum a too rigid framework?
Countless teams have moaned over Scrum being too rigid and not really suited for their particular domain. As an agile coach responsible for countless agile transitions I strongly disagree. Why do teams claim Scrum would be too rigid? There are several reasons and the...
“We tried Scrum and it didn’t work”
I hear this statement a lot recently. Companies claiming they tried to do Scrum, but even after a year or more it didn't work for them. I disagree – let me tell you why. Scrum is one of several agile frameworks you can use to set your company up for a VUCA world. It...
Understand Sprint Burn-Down Patterns
A Scrum team can learn a lot form sprint burn-down charts. I want to help you recognize typical patterns, understand what causes problems and how to resolve these issues. For continuous improvement in Scrum you need to be able to read the patterns in your burn-down charts.
What is a Sprint Burn-Down Chart?
The burn-down chart is a tool in the agile Scrum framework to unearth inefficiencies in a team and improve towards greater agility. In an agile team or organization you should know about this chart and how to construct it.
Scrum will not make you agile!
Or: Would you trust a Geiger counter to save your life? Disclaimer: I love Scrum — it’s an awesome framework! But too many people believe that Scrum would make their company agile; this is wrong and this is why I wrote this article. Enjoy. When I went to Chernobyl, a...
How to split a user story between two teams?
Do you have user stories that need the expertise of more than one team? How do you organize this? The situation Your specific situation might be slightly different, but here is a common situation I have seen: The company organizes around a few technical platform teams...