Community Blog

Live & online training, when done well can be as effective, or even more effective than in-person training.

Summer Lawrence shares perspectives on professional coaching.

Since I first started working with Scrum in 2005, I have wondered what would eventually come along to replace it. Scrum has now been around for over 25 years, so surely something else would emerge?

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.

Would you be interested in increasing your chances of success following through on your New Year’s resolutions by 12%? Researchers at Stockholm University and Linköping University in Sweden analyzed resolutions made by 1,066 people and had some fascinating results that might impact not only your New Year’s resolutions but decision-making in general.

How to Fail as an Agile Coach in Scrum by Scrum.org trainer Chee-Hong Hsia.  ​​​​​​​Helping organisations in their Agile journey sustainably while respecting the three Scrum accountabilities. A must-read if you're a dedicated Agile Coach or working with Agile Coaches in your organisation where Scrum is being adopted.

The Project Mindset approach, in which success is defined upfront based on Scope, Time and Budget, will (based on experiences) lead to less business involvement and more task management. The Product Mindset approach, in which success is continuously driven by business metrics like User adaption/retention, revenue cost saving per feature, will (based on experiences) lead to less waste, more creativity and more releases.

The future is unknown and although some people claim to be able to predict the future, most people can't. But to look a little ahead, into the future, to have a sense of when certain items on the Product Backlog are finished, predictability would be very useful. Although we can't be completely predictable, it is helpful if we are a little more predictable than we are now. And therefore we need some measurement results from the near past.

On a recent episode of Your Daily Scrum: Professional Scrum Trainers Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley address a common criticism of Scrum: Scrum isn't really agile, it's a command and control framework!

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.

A common trend among Scrum practitioners that learn about the Kata the first time is to build bridges to something familiar, in this case Scrum. We often hear similar questions such as "Is a Kata a Sprint?", or "How long is Kata?". For that reason, I have a put together a quick follow-up video to discuss the differences between Scrum and Kata.

This blog post discusses how the Circles of Improvement from the book by Stephen R. Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, work in Scrum.

The latest EBM (Evidence-Based Management) guide makes a reference to the Improvement Kata as a way to practice scientific thinking for value-based metrics. That Kata consists of 4 basic routines and was popularized for many years by Mike Rother.

I had a leadership nightmare. It was as if most of the directors I have heard and met so far gathered and accompanied me….

What's the Difference Between Scrum & Agile?

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.

Have you ever noticed people keep talking about things, but they've not aligned with what their words mean? I have seen agility measured as the number of "agile teams" and the "number of training attendees" more often than I like to admit.

Companies have shifted to long-term remote work and employees across many different industries are accepting that the pre-pandemic workplace will not come back. I call this "radical remote".

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

Se você é ou busca ser um Líder Ágil, você precisa conhecer essa técnica de como deixar seu time mais ágil.

Sempre recebo perguntas do tipo: O que é um Líder Ágil? Preciso me tornar um? O que ganho com isso? Resolvi então escrever esse artigo, para tentar ajudar a comunidade.

Scrum and agility create frameworks for diversity. A healthy mix of men and women will benefit from this. In this post I want to explain why.

In business, the quest for predictability is universal. We all want to grab hold of the reality we face everyday and, somehow, bend it to our will.

Usually conversation between developers and Product Owner goes around acceptance criteria just to negotiate scope of requirements for one user story, but knowledge and context are not conveyed in the same structured way. User Story Canvas can help Scrum Team to fix these problems by focusing team to confirm more complex aspects.

Even though applying agile processes in that context is often a good and valuable idea, business agility is a much bigger term than that. It means how well an organization is equipped to react to market changes, merging customer needs or other factors that impact the business as a whole. 

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 urgency of having the right type of conversation, especially today in a remote setting, has significantly increased overnight. This blog provides a perspective on a particular type of conversation and my own “personal experiences”  that show we need them more than ever.

What is a Product Owner? What are the differences between a Product Owner and Project Manager? Isn’t a Product Owner some kind of an Agile Project Manager? These are some of the questions we often get from people in our Scrum.org classes.

Lean Coffee is a powerful meeting faciliation technique that can be used in coffee shops, conferences, open space, Scrum events or simply replace existing corporate meeting formats.

In this blog, we’ll dive deeper into the topic: “Scrum Master vs Project Manager”. If you’re having a similar question about the Product Owner vs the Project Manager.

The terms "iterative" and "incremental" are used so frequently and naturally in the context of agile that their meaning is no longer challenged.

Part I of this Evidence-Based Management (EBM) blog post series covered a general introduction to show how evidence-based management can be a powerful instrument when being used in agile transformations.

In this article, I want to clarify the need for agility in modern businesses and what agility in organisational design actually is.

Bob and Carl Ferro are the proud owners of Nick’s Bar and Grill in Hollywood Beach since 1980 and this place is an institution in this South Florida beach town to say the least.

Not all companies need to be agile companies. What does it really mean to be an agile organization and how do you know if you need to be one? Watch this short 4 minute episode of Responsive Advisors Agile B-Sides video blog to find out!

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.

Many thanks to attendees at my PAL-E workshop in London on 26-27 October who reviewed & debugged my change story for "what is organizational agility?"

Just to set the scene, I haven’t figured this out yet. I can tell you my story, in all its ugliness. It’s based on a real story, but it’s changed significantly from reality to protect the innocent. I hope you still find my account useful.

The term Agile Transformation is often mingled together with a series of other things, for example a business transformation or a digital transformation. These are however very different things.

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?

Why is it that when the going gets tough, “agile” gets the blame? There is so much online bashing of [insert random agile framework or method] going on, that it made me wonder if there is a pattern behind it. I believe there is.

The core responsibility of the agile leader is creating the right context for the agile teams so they can thrive and self-manage. One of the characteristics of this context is all about ownership. In my book ‘Agile Leadership Toolkit’ I dedicate a whole part to this important topic.

“We want to be more agile in our delivery.” “We need to build up our teams.” “How can we do Scrum well?” Companies are asking themselves these questions every day and looking in various places for the answers.

The traditional approach of RFI – RFP – Review – LOI is neither lean or agile. The Lean Agile Procurement approach reduces the sourcing cycle time to days, with collaborative clarification of the product with prospective partners while reducing the risk of a poor partner and company evaluation.