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Alistair Cockburn has been sharing this distillation of Scrum in a recent talk called “Returning to the Heart of Agile”.  I really like the simplicity of this description since it recalls that Scrum is a simple framework. Deliver (or demo) each Sprint, with a...

“Scrum has been a big disappointment; a failed experiment that hasn’t delivered anywhere near the positive impact that management was hoping for.” Not the most uplifting quote, but Geoff Watts (@geoffcwatts) starts his book, Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great...

“The only ‘thing’ capable of dealing with complexity is human beings” This is the central thesis of Niels Pflaeging’s book, Organize For Complexity: How to Get Life Back into Work to Build the High-Performance Organization, and speaks to the...

Last weekend I was reviewing the traffic on the website and here are the top ten articles that people were clicking on in 2015.  This list is really interesting, so take a moment to review the best of 2015 and enjoy!  Happy New Year! What is Teamicide? – last year I...

Over the past ten years I think I have seen maybe a dozen organizations really embrace the Agile mindset.  Most people think Scrum is something that you do rather than a new way of thinking about how to improve your team, organization and business.  I find this to b...

One of the greatest challenges to trust, collaboration and self-organization in the workplace is visibility.  This is because most of software development is intellectual work without physical representation.  We take complex ideas on what a software product should do and express...

The work will get done when it gets done.  Demanding that a new product, service or upgrade be completed by January 23, 2016 is just not helpful.  Arbitrary deadlines simply cause too much stress and anguish for everyone – developers, customers and managers.  The people...

Burndown charts are bad!  Burndown charts are abused by mangers!  We hate Burndown charts (and estimates!!), so let’s get rid of them all!  If you are hearing those words, or something similar, from the fire eaters in your office, they are probably right. While I like Burndown...

Ever have the experience that a decision made at one meeting later gets undone by decision made at a different meeting?  Or perhaps you have sat through a real long meeting to discuss an important issue only to find out the real decision was made later in the week by a different...

Ever show up to a meeting expecting your ideas and comments to be taken in consideration only to be cut short by the clock?  Or perhaps you have had the experience of participating in a Q&A session only to see it morph into a sustained dialogue between two parties that goes...