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Blog Post

The Importance of Clear Accountability in Scrum 

July 25, 2021
A Scrum team consists of three clear accountabilities: one Scrum Master, one Product Owner, and Developers.  Often, when working with a Scrum team struggling with excessive conflict or a lack of trust, I find the culprit is a lack of clarity around each of these accountabilities.  Even with the best intentions, the Product Owner can become too focused on the upcoming Sprint and not focused enough on the bigger picture.  The Scrum Master can become overly protective of the team, and the Developers - wishing only to please - can take on too much work, jeopardizing the Sprint Goal.     
Blog Post

4 Ways Organizations Use Goals Poorly (and How EBM Can Help)

July 22, 2021
I am often asked how to create better goals. This comes up at the team level, and it also comes up for the wider organization. When we are dealing with complexity, there is no one right way, no perfect template, and no best practice. And I find it helpful to look at the goals people are using today, explore the benefits those goals are giving them, and identify if there are unintended consequences of how they are using goals. In this post, I will share some common patterns I have noticed that lead to using goals poorly.
Blog Post

Time to Market - It’s Not Just About Speed

July 21, 2021
When I’m describing the Key Value Areas (KVAs) of Evidence-Based Management, I find Time to Market is often misunderstood to mean “just go faster.” We need to scrub off the scent of “we know what we need to do, we just need to do it faster.” In complexity, goals and execution have a lot of unknowns, and things emerge as we do the work. So, we will be unsuccessful if we choose to follow a plan, even if we do it faster.
Blog Post

Professionalism, Leadership and EBM

July 21, 2021
The role of an agile leader is to create and foster an environment where empiricism thrives to support the delivery of value. Evidence Based Management supports this, by providing a framework to link goals and objective measures to provide insights in to how effectively the organisation is working.
Blog Post

Making Measurement Meaningful with Evidence-Based Management

July 21, 2021
EBM provides organizations with an opportunity to use empiricism to improve customer outcomes by delivering greater value. It helps to improve collaboration by elevating conversations from opinion-based discussions to evidence-based discussions and decisions. EBM may feel awkward at first, but it will be rewarding. The seeds of learning and changing are there.
Blog Post

Success of Implementing EBM

July 21, 2021
Previously, I have described some challenges with the Evidence-Based Management implementation. There are plenty of challenges regarding the process of applying Evidence-Based Management, there are also great results.

Gestión Basada en Evidencia de Scrum.org

July 21, 2021
La Gestión basada en evidencia de Scrum.org es un marco de trabajo que provee un enfoque empírico para mejorar continuamente el valor entregado a los clientes, las capacidades organizacionales para entregar ese valor y los resultados de negocio en un entorno de alta incertidumbre.
Blog Post

Tobias Mayer on Agility

July 16, 2021
There are loads of blog posts, articles and podcasts about agile - what it should be, what it should do, how it should look? The problem is that a lot of what’s out there is hypothetical and not based on field experience.
Blog Post

How A Scrum Master Can "BE" A Co-Active Scrum Coach

July 13, 2021
As you walk this path, remember that just like Scaled Professional Scrum is Scrum, Co-Active Scrum Coaching is Co-Active Coaching. All the cornerstones, contexts, principles and practices of Co-Active Coaching must be upheld in Co-Actives Scrum Coaching.
Blog Post

Five Essential Things Needed for Agile Transformation

July 12, 2021
If someone can give you the answer easily for: What is Agile Transformation? And how do we do? I bet that they don’t completely understand the question or don’t have enough experience. Transformation or change in a group or organization is always a challenge. It is complex work and needs a lot of effort.
Blog Post

 What happens to Product Backlog Items that you can’t complete by the end of the Sprint?

July 11, 2021
The purpose of the Sprint is to deliver a ‘Done’ increment which meets the Sprint Goal.  At the Sprint Planning event, the Product Owner and the Scrum Team collaborate together to create a Sprint Goal - which describes why the Sprint is valuable - after which the Development team selects Product Backlog Items which describe what will be delivered and creates a plan for how to deliver them.  
Blog Post

[BLOG/VLOG] UX the Foundation of Agility

July 7, 2021
My experience tells me that IT industry has some huge problems! First, there are many products for a lot of money that do not make sense. Second, products are created that solve the right problems in the wrong way. Third, products are created that solve the right problems in the right way but are not "sexy" in the eyes of users. All these 3 problems are addressed by the so-called User Experience. Although I must say that this is an often confusing concept. Many people hearing User Experience mean User Interface, and this is only a part of the truth! UI design is included in UX, but UX is a much, much broader concept.
Blog Post

Can Scrum Work for Hard Deadlines?

July 6, 2021
If you’ve ever wondered whether Scrum can work for hard deadlines, the answer is – yes!  Not only can Scrum work in these situations, but in my experience, using this agile framework increases the probability of meeting challenging  deadlines.