In the world of product development, the language we use can profoundly shape our approach to work. 🗣️ One term that I believe has been misused to the point of causing more harm than good is "User Stories". 📚 In my latest blog post, I argue for a shift away from this term towards a more flexible and transparent framework for describing our work: "Product Backlog Items". 🔄 This change can help us avoid the pitfalls of trying to force all our work into a user story format and ultimately lead to more effective product development. 💡 Join me as I delve into this topic and propose a new way of thinking about our work. 🚀 #ProductDevelopment #BacklogManagement

🎯📝 Master the delicate balance of crafting a #ProductBacklog! 🚀 Our latest blog post guides you through the path of keeping it lean💡, but not too lean, anticipating the future🔭 without overcrowding. 🔄 Embrace the power of regular reflection meetings to turn surprises into golden insights! 🤔💼 Be the sculptor of your backlog 🎨⚒️ - Trim it, shape it and make it ready for the future.

🔥 Navigating the Product Backlog just got more exciting! 🚀 Unravel why hierarchy might be your ship's anchor ⚓ in the stormy seas of complexity. 🔍 This article unveils the pitfalls of hierarchy and demystifies the complexities in product development. Learn how streamlining your backlog enhances innovation and collaboration. Discover the delicate balance between strategic direction and team autonomy. Equip your teams with the tools and insights they need to thrive in Agile environments. 📈

🔍 Discover the underpinnings of a transparent and promising future in Agile Product Management! My latest blog post explores the indispensable role of an ordered Product Backlog that is coherent, refined, and rightly sized.

The Sprint backlog, a cornerstone of Scrum, offers teams a transparent view of their current work and progress. It's essential to differentiate between the Sprint goal and the Sprint backlog, ensuring that teams set achievable goals while maintaining flexibility to adapt to changing needs.

🏋️‍♂️🔄 Agile Practices = Gym Memberships? Discover the unexpected connection in our latest article! Just as people sign up for gym memberships with good intentions but don’t always follow through, companies can adopt Agile methodologies without fully reaping the benefits. Learn how to avoid being stuck with an 'unused membership' and elevate your Agile game to its full potential.💡💪

⚡🌩️#StormsOfNeglect: The Cataclysmic Consequences of Ignoring Usable Products in Agile!🌩️⚡ What if I told you that neglecting usable working products in Agile is like navigating a stormy sea without a compass? 🌊🚢 If you think skipping usable products in iterations is harmless, brace yourself for the torrential downpour of woes it can unleash! From eroding stakeholder trust to the tsunami of technical debt, from getting engulfed in the quicksand of adaptability to the barren desert of feedback. It’s a whirlwind of compounding issues that no Agile team should weather! 🌪️💥 Dive in as I illuminate the catastrophic perils of neglecting usable working products when it should foster trust, alignment, adaptability, and quality! 🛡️⚙️

🚀💥#UsableWorkingProduct: Your Ultimate Weapon Against Risks in Agile💥🚀 ⚠️ Ever wondered why some Agile projects falter? Is your fortress of documentation crumbling against the relentless tides of market change? 🌊 Here’s the secret sauce - It’s all about Usable Working Products! 🎯🔧 Too many Agile teams are trapped in the illusion of progress without creating shippable products. It’s time to unleash the secret weapon against risks - deliver increments that users can interact with, validate, and provide feedback on! 🛠🚀

🎯#Agile Usable Products vs. Documentation in Traditional Project Management📝 💡Are you still torn between embracing Agile's nimble strides or holding onto the tried-and-true documentation-heavy Traditional Project Management? Let's crack the code! 🕵️‍♂️ In an ever-evolving software development landscape, striking the right balance is pivotal.🔧 Agile’s focus on continuous delivery of working products 🚀 might be the silver bullet in risk mitigation, whereas Traditional Project Management lays the groundwork with its elaborate documentation. 📚 But can we merge the best of both worlds? 🌍 Or does Agile already include sufficient documentation an planning?

🔍 *Agility in Red Markets: A Paradigm Shift* 🔍 Alpha organisations, once formidable, now face challenges in red markets due to their hierarchical structures. Slow decisions, stifled innovation, untapped talent, and customer disconnect are evident. In contrast, Beta organisations thrive with agility and responsiveness. Let's embrace this shift for a prosperous future.

🚀 Urgent Call for Agile Transformation 🚀 Alpha organizations, relics of the Industrial Age, are hierarchical & slow, ill-suited for today's dynamic 'Red' markets. Enter Beta organisations: agile, decentralised & adaptable, bred for innovation. But sadly, agility is losing the battle. Quick fixes won’t do; deep-rooted change is needed. Time to revive the Beta organisational model through radical restructuring. Embrace agility, decentralization & continuous adaption for real sustainable transformation.

🔥 Embrace Uniqueness: Carve Your Own Path to Scaling Success 🔥 Business Leaders, are you ready to unlock the true potential of your organization's scaling journey? 🚀 In my latest post, I delve into the importance of creating your own scaling practices and why it leads to long-term business success. Let's break free from standardised approaches and embrace what sets us apart. 💪 🧬 Unique DNA of Success: Your organization's success is built on a distinctive DNA that sets you apart from competitors. Don't risk diluting your competitive edge by blindly adopting frameworks like SAFe or the Spotify Model. Instead, leverage your unique characteristics and tailor your scaling practices to preserve your DNA. 🧬

Steve is great, but in terms of Agile leadership, he doesn’t touch sides – in my opinion – to Satya Nadella. You can see the difficulty he created within Apple because all innovation, product development, and so forth stemmed from him rather than a culture of innovation permeating the organization.

Why does Agile focus on values and principles rather than a prescribed set of steps? In an agile space, there are no predetermined set of steps that will lead to a predefined outcome. The problem has never been solved before, nor has the solution ever been created, so you don’t know what you don’t know. There is no formula that is going to guarantee a desired outcome.

Agility and self-organisation were beaten to a stalemate by hierarchy and command & control. We must fight back but can't do that while continuing to frame complex red practices in a complicated blue context.

This workshop was delivered on 16th September 2021 and focused on introducing the core concepts of the Sprint Review and its empirical nature.

This workshop was delivered on 2nd September 2021 and focused on introducing the core concepts of Kanban & Flow.

This workshop was delivered on 19th August 2021 and focused on introducing the core concepts of Scrum & Empiricism. I used a combination of Liberating Structures, Microsoft Teams, and Mural to deliver an interactive session.

This workshop was delivered on 5th August 2021 and focused on highlighting the value of people in the product delivery world and some of the things that need to change.

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 pe

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.