Category

I live in the City of San Diego and we have an estimated 1.4 million people living within the city limits.  Could you ever imagine someone asking the Mayor, or the City Council, “Do we really need so many fulltime fire fighters?”  Yet, a variation of this topic comes...

“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...

“Scrum will highlight every deficiency and impediment that the enterprise has so the enterprise can fix them and change into [the best product development] organization [in its market].”  Ken Schwaber As teams and businesses adopt Scrum and Agile to their enterprise, they will...

Quick quiz for all you Scrum experts out there.  Which of these common scenarios for Scrum Team are blockers and which would be classified as impediments? The build is broken. The process to interview and onboard a new Team member takes at least six weeks. Team members do not...

Ever wonder why some Agile practitioners regularly butt heads with more traditionally minded managers? Have you ever spent significant one-on-one time with a Product Owner (or a Team member or a Stakeholder) to answer all their questions about why and how Scrum works and they...

Did you know that in addition to the Agile Manifesto that the authors listed their twelve principles of Agile software?  Based upon my very unscientific survey of recent CSM students, only about 20% to 30% of people who were simply aware the Agile Manifesto existed were also...

While the ideas written in the Agile Manifesto  have been inspiring and durable, the actual uptake and introduction of these new ways of working within teams and organizations has not been long-lasting.  It seems like what was radical and groundbreaking in February 2001 now feels...

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...

Meetings are such a disaster!  There are so many things wrong with meetings today from the frequency of meetings to number of participants to a complete lack of purpose to horrible facilitation, that I do not know where to begin.  IMO, the biggest problem with most meetings is...

A meeting is any conversation that results in a decision in order to get something done.  Since the goal of the meeting is to arrive at a decision, the meeting participants stay in the meeting until they have arrived at the decision – not one second longer, not one second...