Community Blog

Fourth blog, in a blog series about the upcoming book: Creating Agile Organizations - A Systemic Approach, by Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko.

Many problems at the workplace are not the fault of the individual managers or teams. They are often the result of working in an organizational design(OD) that impedes rather than supports Agility. The OD determines, to a large extent, how people cooperate, the prevailing mental models, and how work gets done. To change all of this takes time and requires people to unlearn old lessons and relearn new ones that support Agility. 

How the Agile Kata can help following through on Improvement ideas, identified for example in a Sprint Retrospective.

A learning model is a must to build a learning organization/team. Identifying and creating learning loops and cycles within the learning model is extremely important. In this article, I would like to share a learning model that I applied to the teams, helping them learn and develop.

Cet article est la traduction française de l’article que j’ai publié le 14/02/2022 : https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/are-daos-future-agile-organization

In my Professional Scrum Training and coaching sessions with teams, I’m often asked about how to navigate organizations’ centralized planification. In this article, I'll share an alternative to traditional organizations’ top-down structures - DAOs. We will discover what they are, how they support Scrum teams to better achieve their goals, and why this is a game changer.

Forget all these Agile Maturity Scans which are often treated as management reports and too focussed on the mechanical side of "do these things and the maturity goes up". Change itself should be considered an empirical journey with no end state. It’s always on the move, so start with making your transformation brutally transparent.

In my recent post, I told the story of the time I was fired as a Scrum Master. This time I will tell you about a time I decided to quit (probably shortly before I would have been fired!).

Being a Scrum Master can be tough. You are accountable for helping organisations change the way they approach complex work. If you upset enough of the wrong people you may end up “changing” yourself out of a job.

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.

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" is an awesome book. It is one of the biggest inspirations in my life! It is written by Steven Covey. The book describes... surprise, surprise, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People :) I will present them but in the context of Scrum Master's work.

Complaining is like releasing gas. It’s a natural occurrence. Everyone does it. But no one wants someone else to do it next to them. How to complain less and do more by Sahin Guvenilir.

At a recent Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master II class, I asked the group to write down some learnings from the class that may help other Scrum Masters. One statement that came up has stuck in my mind ever since: “Don’t be a comfortable Scrum Master.” – Unknown Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master II Attendee.

Many years ago, when I began working with clients on full-scale agile transformations (beyond the team-level or product perspective), I realized that organizations would benefit from a practice that help them experiment toward more agility. As a result, I crossed paths with the world of Kata.

The term organizational agility is everywhere these days, but what does it really mean? Can we even define it at all? Deepen your understanding of the manifesto and why it is essential to implementing healthy agile that delivers meaningful value.

A real life Agile transformation story! You can download the free eBook!

In Leslie Morse's first Scrum.org blog post she explores the intersection of professional coaching and agile coaching, and the opportunity we have as agilists to overcome the limitations of an industrialized mindset and create space for ushering in the future of work.

What I usually hear is “Scrum is great, but it doesn’t work in my organization, because...” and then follows a list of excuses why change is impossible or hard.

For many years, many of us have had strong opinions about the importance of having teams that are co-located.

The Agile Transformation Kata is for example such a practice that reinforces an agile mindset during an agile transformation, and through many reflection cycles allows to adapt to new emerging needs, like COVID-19.

The Scrum Team gathers around their team desk to hold the Daily Scrum.

One of the teams I worked with suggested dropping the Sprint Retrospective and the Sprint Review from the Sprint and only do them every other Sprint.  

This is quite a long read which you can download as the whitepaper "Systems Thinking in Organizational Coaching".

How do you change a system that is as complex as an organization? This is the quintessential question facing Scrum Masters, Product Owners and other drivers of change. In this post, we explore how the Liberating Structure ‘Panarchy’ offers a powerful perspective and allows you to put systems thinking into practice. And even though it is perhaps the most complicated of them all, Panarchy brings together all the promises of Liberating Structures: engage everyone and unleash change on every level. Its a great way to drive organizational change together in an organic way.

Fighting organizational impediments as a Product Owner? Combine powers and utilize the Product Owner and Scrum Master symbiosis. And create more focus at the same time.

Nearly every conversation I have with people who are trying to bring agility to their organizations eventually comes around to the challenge of changing the culture of the organization.

In football, the team that wins is the one that gets the ball in the other team’s goal most times. Not the one that runs the most.

In football, the team that wins is the one that gets the ball in the other team’s goal most times. Not the one that runs the most.

I believe there are three things you need to do regardless of the framework, methodology or program you are embracing with your organization.

Katas and patterns go hand in hand and so does the Agile Transformation Kata (ATK) harmonize very well with the organizational change patterns published for example by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising in their book  More Fearless Change.

When working with a flow-based Kanban system there are a few statements that I would suggest most teams should bear in mind.

There are four key words in the first value of the Agile Manifesto: “Individuals and their interactions over processes and tools”

Imagine for a moment what frequently asked questions around agile transformations look like. Which questions do you hear most often as it seems agile transformation has been a hot topic lately?

I have my own biases,  having seen co-located teams work very well and having struggled with “dislocated” teams, I often recommend my clients to reconsider “dislocated” teams. 

Unclear language leads to incomplete transparency and ambiguity. The careful use of words like ‘bug’ will improve decision-making in your organization.

How effectively are you maximizing value when dependencies tell you what to do first? Dependencies impact the core of the role of Product Owner.

For executives and for change agents who deal with executives in large contexts ...

Overcome common transformation mistakes and enhance your agility.

An executive is a person who owns the strategy or sets the direction of travel or sets justifications for spending. This exec could be the Product Owner for a chunk of the organization.

Scrum is based on self-managed teams. Self-managed teams are able to evolve and adapt quicker in today’s highly complex working environments than traditional command-and-control management structures.

I first met Sally,and then later Francis her husband, at a local user group - Agile in Leeds, where Sally delivered a fantastic 10 minute talk on how she implemented Scrum to help Francis with ADHD. 

Agility is the ability of an organization to adapt to new conditions and to change its direction. The modern service-based format of the production-based economy of the previous century renders the competence of companies to change even stronger than before.

Bottom line - WiP limits must be applied to improve flow of the delivery of value. It's a key lever to improve the performance of Professional Scrum Teams, and it's required by the Kanban Guide for Scrum.

Over the centuries, humans have managed to adapt to many situations and evolve to become what we are today. History shows that we have an innate ability to adapt and evolve. This remains valid as part of a change in business, such as the adoption of Scrum.

I have created a little exercise that I like to use to help focus the on things we can change, or at least situations to seek out or avoid, to help focus change efforts. The essence of it is summarized in a picture. I call this the agile affinity model, and the dimensions the key drivers of empiricism.

Last time I talked about the Ghana Police Service (GPS) I was talking about Professional Organisational Change and the approach the Inspector General of Polic

The Scrum framework thrives on empirical process control. The inspection of observable results gives us insights in what might be most valuable next, always acknowledging that the future is unwritten.