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Agile - End Game... Achieving Organizational Agility 12-Steps

Apr 29, 2019
2 min

Agile - End Game... Achieving Organizational Agility 12-Steps

One question that I often get asked is what comes after Agile? Many feel like the ride is nearing its end while others are actually just getting started on their Agile journey. I think this question has a more natural version for what we are trying to figure out... As an organization, are we trying to do agile, or are we trying to be Agile and achieve agility? The feeling of uncertainty that revolves around what do I do next? What things should we be benchmarking and keeping

Agile Process: Looks Too Familiar to Me

Apr 19, 2019
3 min

Agile Process: Looks Too Familiar to Me

In many companies throughout the world, Agile is becoming a way of operating, a way to act and something to be within the organization. For those companies, there are adaptations and permutations that seem inevitable for them as they adopt a new way of thinking and organizing around their work. However, there is a growing tendency to change the way that things are being done by using the same methods that have always been done. Seems a bit counterintuitive to say the least. L

The Death of a ScrumMaster

Jan 29, 2019
4 min

The Death of a ScrumMaster

What happens when the ScrumMaster becomes so overzealous that their message is rejected? Over the past couple years, I have seen this situation play out in several companies that I have worked with in depth. The situation is such that a person who has the role of ScrumMaster gives the “woe is me” response to how well things are going with the team or teams they are working with. Nothing seems to be going right when you talk to them. However, when looking at the team, they con

To Agile and Beyond...

Roles, Responsibilities and More Agile Fun

Dec 16, 2018
3 min

Roles, Responsibilities and More Agile Fun

There are many trains of thought about being precise with the roles used within your Agile teams. The underlying principles are about making sure that certain responsibilities are taken care of and those are typically embodied in different people. Here they are: Product Owner / Cutomer ScrumMaster / Facilitator Team Member / Implementor While Scrum is very specific in what the roles are called, not all organizations employ the specific names being utilized by Scrum. Perhaps t

Proper Expectations Lead to More Success

Nov 8, 2018
7 min

Proper Expectations Lead to More Success

Life seems to be full of changes and modifications. Sometimes this can seem hourly or daily depending on what is happening at different stages of your personal or work life. In order to make sure that life can be successful, there needs to be some level of expectation that is set or understood to be able to acknowledge success or failure. Let’s then look into a few ideas on what is really needed to have success. Key factors exist: Defined outcome needs to be understood Regul

The Secret to PERFECT Agile Estimates

Oct 22, 2018
2 min

The Secret to PERFECT Agile Estimates

One of the biggest challenges organizations of any size face is their inability to accurately forecast and estimate. This has been an issue since the beginning of time. Time literally is our biggest hurdle to forecasting. Whether we run into things that we did not account for, or try our very best to be precise only to discover that things outside of our control have caused us to deviate, the truth s time based estimates are the worst. Without perfectly ideal conditions, even

Benefits of Agile for your Business

Aug 28, 2018
1 min

Benefits of Agile for your Business

Whenever companies are considering why Agile is being used, there are many things to consider. Executives, managers, sales and marketing all want to have some predictability in what is being delivered from a software or product perspective. What are you looking to get out of Agile being leveraged within your organization. We have recently launched a webinar series that is highlighting several topics for a successful use of Agile within an organization. How do you make sure yo

Agile Heroes Assemble - New Age of Priority

Aug 27, 2018
7 min

Agile Heroes Assemble - New Age of Priority

Prioritization is a very interesting and profound thing. How companies focus on their top priority initiatives can change the course of not only their products, but the company as a whole and marketplaces. Companies gain and lose clientele based on how they determine different items should be focused on sooner than later. The idea that somehow a customer wanting to pay for a request means you should perform the work is very enticing. Many companies are never at the point of b

Agile Estimation - Game of Numbers?

Aug 1, 2018
6 min

Agile Estimation - Game of Numbers?

Everything we do has a cost. There are personnel, equipment, and time costs. There is a cost in resources, hardware and software, systems and support to develop our products. There are also opportunity costs of using our resources to develop one product which then prevents us from developing other products we could have built. We can use some Agile principles to help us understand what the cost of developing some of these products and features is before we begin. Accurate e

Agile Velocity - Performance and Predictability

Aug 1, 2018
4 min

Agile Velocity - Performance and Predictability

What is Velocity? Velocity in Agile and Scrum is a measure of how much work can be done per sprint. As we discussed in the companion blog on Estimation, when we are working on estimating the size of user stories we are approximating d, the distance a user story requires us to travel. Velocity is literally the v. How many user stories or story points can we complete in a given sprint. With dand vwe can estimate the Time trequired to complete the given work. Velocity is a fi

Agile Teams: Co-location - 21st Century Challenges

Stephanie Lindstrom

Jul 27, 2018
4 min

Agile Teams: Co-location - 21st Century Challenges

I live and work in Tampa, Florida. The majority of my AgileDad team lives across the country. We are highly efficient and results driven for our clients. How do we make it work? First off, we do a DAILY standup. Yes, 10am on the east coast and 8am mountain time, EVERYDAY. It starts the day on the right foot and motivates everyone. For you and your co-located teams, take heed. You will run into a number of roadblocks, but these can be overcome. There will be technical challeng

Scrumming our cross-country move

Agile Tips for a Non-Technical Team

Stephanie Lindstrom

Jun 13, 2018
2 min

Agile Tips for a Non-Technical Team

When many of us hear the term, Scrum in an Agile environment, the knee jerk reaction is, “oh, that does not apply to me because that process works for technical development teams”. Well, friends, that assumption is not the case at all. Below, I will outline a recent experience in which Scrum was used to solve real world organizational problems in a non-technical environment . Think about the problem to solve. And, as a team, spend a few minutes (5-ish) to come up with words t

Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great

Daily Standup: Increasing Team Accountability

AgileDad University - What are the three roles of Scrum?

Agile: It's about Common Sense

Apr 4, 2018
3 min

Agile: It's about Common Sense

One by one companies utilize efforts to become more Agile in their approach. In so doing, I am met time and time again with companies across various industries where people tell me that I just don't understand what is going on in their company. They are different. They are unique. There's no way that this whole "Agile thing" can even work for them. Now early on in my career I may have been inclined to listen to these naysayers and think how do I adapt to what they know and wh

Product Backlog: Avoiding the Dreaded Backlog Rot

Mar 31, 2018
7 min

Product Backlog: Avoiding the Dreaded Backlog Rot

We oftentimes have requests that are submitted through well-meaning stakeholders that fill up our backlog. When those requests come in, we try our best to honor the mantra of anyone can add items to the Product Backlog. However, what do we do to ensure that the Product Backlog doesn't become unmanageable. There are 3 keys things to remember... First, The Product Owner is the person to prioritize the requests. Second, No should be a readily available and used word. And Third,

Scrum - Accelerating Team Performance

Mar 30, 2018
4 min

Scrum - Accelerating Team Performance

When implementing Scrum into our workflow we don’t often think about the meaning of the word Scrum. Where did it come from? What does it stand for? Most people seem to think it’s an acronym for something. Jeff Sutherland created the framework in 1993 and he borrowed the term “Scrum” from professors Takeuchi and Nonaka’s publication in the Harvard Business Review “The New New Product Development Game” wherein they compared high performing teams to a rugby team. “In today’s