Whether you use SAFe, LeSS, Scrum, Kanban … is NOT the important success factor for agility. Just as picking the best electric guitar is not gonna make you a rock star. ? Frameworks and models are just 20% of what makes you agile. What really makes or breaks agility?...
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...
How many times have you seen sprint reviews without stakeholders? I must admit, I have seen this far too often in my life. And it's a waste of time! Why is it useless? First we have to ask, what the purpose of a review is. I often get answers like: ? to see the...
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 meme shows a typical evasive move commonly camouflaged as “Agile Transformation“. Sometimes it‘s a deliberate evasion technique, sometimes it‘s subconscious. What makes you agile is not a set of roles or the implementation of a framework. What makes you agile is a...
Want faster time-to-market? Increase your decision-making speed! Many delays in building products come from long decision-making processes. In this time and age, hardly any company can afford to have a slow decision-making process. Some factors slowing down decision...
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...
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...
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...
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...