I have been asked why you can’t have Project Managers in Scrum, and there are a number of discussions on boards that have entertained me, where there is a question about whether there is such a thing as an Agile Project Manager? The problem for me is that Project Managers are measured on the wrong […]
This is a short video giving an overview of #NoEstimates describing how simple and how powerful the tool is but also some clarification of the limitations of the tool. One of the things I have noticed over the last few years is a drastic increase in the use of metrics. Particularly with the surge in […]
This is a short video giving an overview of #NoEstimates describing how simple and how powerful the tool is but also some clarification of the limitations of the tool. I am a Director, Software Engineering for Mastercard. supporting teams of software developers collaborating to deliver critical products and solutions in an always-on domain. I am […]
I have seen a number of articles recently that refer to the stages of remote work or maturity of your remote team as a linear progression to only one possible Nirvana. The Nirvana in question appears to be 100% independence, 100% asynchronous communication and no need to ever have any work-related human contact at all. […]
These are slides from the Agile Product Ownership Meetup, where we discussed the Discovery Phase of a product. Medical students are taught early to carefully consider the possible impact of their actions, this often translates to a bias towards inaction. A paradox when many of us consider them as being ‘fixers’. “Given an existing problem, […]
One of the challenges of an Agile Coach, or anyone in a management or leadership role is establishing what I have seen referred to as the “zone of acceptance” for individual team members. The Zone of Acceptance is a term for the tasks an individual sees as something they are prepared to do as part of […]
One of the challenges of an Agile Coach, or anyone in a management or leadership role is establishing what I have seen referred to as the “zone of acceptance” for individual team members. The Zone of Acceptance is a term for the tasks an individual sees as something they are prepared to do as part of […]
Have you ever noticed that late projects only ever seem to get later? Why is it that any gains get absorbed and delays get compounded? Let’s say I have a mini-project where I have a builder adding a kitchen to a house, he will construct the walls and then I’ll have a plumber come in […]
Sounds a bit daft to even be having the debate, surely by now there is no one left that still thinks waterfall is the better choice for delivery of complex software projects, unfortunately that is very far from the truth, there seem to be many that still prefer waterfall and recently I even heard it […]
When it comes to leadership it seems that a lot of problems and a great many solutions come down to either a lack of communication or lack of trust, often both. But why are those two skills so difficult to master? How much time and effort gets wasted simply because we don’t trust our employees, […]
One of the most difficult aspects of the transition to Agile is the confusion over how estimation is done. Estimation is difficult, the experts suggest that even with a full picture of what is required and with clear detailed and fixed requirements, the best estimators cannot realistically estimate better than within a 25% margin of error. It’s easily possible […]
I have a theory that in the context of self-organizing teams in a business environment, there are zones of diminishing responsibility and thus the effectiveness of self organization as the tasks get further from the perceived core purpose of the team or individual. That is to say that a self-organizing software development team may have […]
As a product owner we should be building products to deliver on the Vision and a set of defined objectives or success criteria. But often our plan is not closely mapped to those criteria or it can be difficult to measure whether we have achieved our Vision or delivered on our objective. Let’s change the […]
One of the challenges of an Agile Coach, or anyone in a management or leadership role is establishing what I have seen referred to as the “zone of acceptance” for individual team members. The Zone of Acceptance is a term for the tasks an individual sees as something they are prepared to do as part of […]
