The Agile Compass

Read about agility, leadership, innovation. Benefit from 20 years of global hands-on agile experience. Subscribe to The Agile Compass.

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?

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”

“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

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?

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!

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?

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...