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“I could be wrong” Mike Cohn at the Scrum Gathering Phoenix At the beginning of the month, I had the opportunity to attend the Scrum Gathering in Phoenix and present a session on Lift Off. It had been about two years since I went to a Gathering and I was SO happy that I attended...

“The major problems of systems work [software development] are not so much technological as sociological” First published in 1987, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister were some of the earliest people to think of software development primarily of a human challenge rather than a...

Want to know what executives and senior leaders really want from Scrum?  Want to know how to avoid disaster with Scrum?  In our final practitioner interview of 2014, I have the pleasure to share my conversation with Jeff Sutherland, inventor and co-creator of Scrum and the CEO of...

Want to hear a success story about how Scrum can be used outside of software?  Then this article is for you!  In this episode of our practitioner spotlight, we hear the story Joe Hardell, Group Leader of Learning & Job Mastery at Abbott Vascular, on how he is using Scrum to...

In a recent conversation with a friend and colleague, she mentioned that while many people leave a Certified ScrumMaster course energized and eager to implement Scrum they lack the tools to be effective in supporting change.  As someone who teaches this course, I asked her what...

Crucial Conversations is one of the most influential books on both my personal and professional life and I am so happy to share it with all of you.  Back in 2007, my mentor enrolled me in a two-day Crucial Conversations course and I was not happy.  I thought it would be a...

This post is a little late, but I wanted to make sure I wrote a summary of the important ideas before I left for San Diego. The Agile CEO: Patterns, Principles and Practices (Charlie Rudd) – I was interested in this topic since it was about executive leadership.  When I...

Ever been excited with a new idea or technique only to be confronted with these common refrains? “That will never work here…especially with my customers (teams or products).” “That sounds good in the theory, but in the real world that idea is just not...

I came across this 2010 post by Scott Bellware recently and felt it would be a good idea to respond.   I feel the entry misunderstands what is Servant Leadership and wanted to offer my views.  It is my opinion that what Scott identifies as robotic, mindless and a focus on...