Community Blog

One of my customers is asking me about the accountabilities of a Product Owner and how they break down.

One of my customers is hiring for the Scrum Master Role and asked if I had a handy-dandy Scrum Master Job Spec that they could use....

Gathering the metrics for Evidence-based Management in software organisations can be a strenuous task and I have a number of customers that are fretting on what to collect and from where.

For many people, the traditional project management methodologies (see PMI / PRINCE2) are the root of the problems that birthed Waterfall. I assert that this is the tip of the iceberg.

In the The Evidence-Based Management Guide we talk about the Intermediate Strategic Goal and I likened that to the Product Goal in the 2020 Scrum Guide.

Story Points and velocity have been used for many years in the Scrum community and have been engrained so much in the way that things are done that most folks believe that they are part of Scrum.

Many organisations wrestle with the seeming incompatibility between agile and release management, and they struggle with release planning and predictable delivery.

Most Scrum Teams that I encounter don’t do refinement of their Product Backlog and try to work on things that they don’t understand correctly.

Many teams are struggling with delivering modern software because they are not building with Test First Principles. Test First gives us the assurance that we have built the correct thing, that what we built is what the customer asked for and that when we change things we don’t break anything inadvertently.

In my last post about Professional software teams creating working software David Corbin made a good point. How do you determining what “Free from fault or defect” means? Since that is different for each Product and may change over time you need to focus on Quality and reflecting that quality in a Definition of Done (DoD).

There is a better way than staggered iterations for delivery that will keep you on the path to agility. Staggered iterations lead to more technical debt and lower quality software.

Value is such a subjective thing that we will often be wrong, and there is no way around that wrongness.

The Evidence-Based Management Guide describes not only a Strategic Goal but also an Intermediate Strategic Goal that is needed to evaluate and adapt your progress towards your intended visions of your product.

In the 2020 Scrum Guide, Ken and Jeff augmented the idea of the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal is a commitment to ensure transparency and focus against progress during a Sprint.

In the 2020 Scrum Guide Ken and Jeff introduces the idea of the Product Goal. The Product Goal is a commitment to ensure transparency and focus against progress.

There is no such thing as an Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, DevOps Transformation, or any of the Whatever Transformation that you can think of or have been sold. You can’t buy agility, and you certainly can’t install it. There is no end state, no optimal outcome, No best practices. We are no longer factory workers.

In our Professional Agile Leadership training, we talk about changing your organisations hiring practices to hire more of the right sort of people

The Siren song of SAFe

In light of the new normal and the last 20 years of technological progress, we need to 

As more and more organisations move towards a higher degree of agility, they inevitably also move towards DevOps practices like Continuous Delivery to facilitate shortening the feedback loops.

Many organisations don't really want to change how they do business and believe that they can continue in the way they always have while still getting better at delivering software. They are wrong!

Like most tools, if you want to run successful training in Microsoft Teams you need to do some homework and some configuration before your class.

With the new normal, I have been delivering all of my 

Something very close to my heart is helping folks understand the origin of the practices that are commonly used in management today. I feel that only with an understanding of history can we figure out how to change the future.

As part of the Scrum.org webinar “Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Martin Hinshelwood - Answering Your Most Pressing Scrum Questions” I was asked a number of questions.

As part of the Scrum.org webinar “Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Martin Hinshelwood - Answering Your Most Pressing Scrum Questions” I was asked a number of questions. Since not only was I on the spot and live, I thought that I should answer each question that was asked again here, as well as those questions I did not get to.

As part of the Scrum.org webinar “Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Martin Hinshelwood - Answering Your Most Pressing Scrum Questions” I was asked a number of questions.

As part of the Scrum.org webinar “Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Martin Hinshelwood - Answering Your Most Pressing Scrum Questions” I was asked a number of questions. Since not only was I on the spot and live, I thought that I should answer each question that was asked again here, as well as those questions I did not get to.

As part of the Scrum.org webinar “Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Martin Hinshelwood - Answering Your Most Pressing Scrum Questions” I was asked a number of questions. Since not only was I on the spot and live, I thought that I should answer each question that was asked again here, as well as those questions I did not get to.

Recently I worked with a new customer in Denver to help them move towards a greater degree of Scrum in their software development. The idea that Scrum is for everyone in your organisation is kind of new, but it reflects the modern understanding of the way people work, and the rejection of Taylorism and command and control.

There is nothing in the Scrum Guide that says that you can't have workflow across the Sprint boundary. I'm going to suggest that not only can you, but you should as long as you don't endanger the Sprint Goal.

There is a frustrating misunderstanding of reality when one thinks that the Product Owner can reject a single story at the Sprint Review.

There are a number of things that you have to think about when selecting a modern source control system. Some of that is purely about code, but modern source control systems are about way more than code.

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 Ghana Police Service is in trouble. Over the last few last few decades, each new Police organisation and government has tried in various ways to carry out some change but most changes have been ad-hoc, temporary, not robust enough or strategic. The old problems return to haunt new administrations and many police officers and the Public has lost hope.

You need quality enablement to achieve predictable delivery for your organisation which takes effort to achieve.

Many companies have started searching for self-organisation. That ideal or nirvana where teams can figure out how to work together effectively with limited or little direction to solve problems.  

Does your company culture resemble Survivor? Do you have a culture in your organisation where individuals that help others are considered slackers for not getting their own assignments complete?

Did you know that the DOD has made it illegal to do waterfall? For the first time in many years the Department of Defence (DOD) in the United States had made a major update to its procurement rules.

A few weeks ago I headed out to the Scrum.org offices in Boston to participate in training to hone my skills as an Evidence-based Management Consultant.