Using Scrum & Kanban in the real world
When I started writing The Innovation Revelation in the summer of 2017, I had a very specific goal: I wanted to take what I’d learned from working with dozens of top organisations, and share the best practices for creating valuable products and services. But it couldn’t be another text book; it had to be easy-to-read… Read More »
At this month’s meetup we tried something new: allowing people to learn by putting them in a simulation of a Scrum event. That is, we created a daily stand-up and retrospective using ‘actors’, then asked participants to jump in if they thought they could do a better job at facilitating. Preparation Ahead of the session,… Read More »
Abraham Lincoln’s “you can’t please all the people all of the time” is certainly true, but sometimes we make the situation worse unnecessarily. Here’s my list of 10 ways to demotivate people in a working environment that are all avoidable: 1. Refer to people as “Resources” Printers, paper, pens, computers are resources; people aren’t. Referring… Read More »
John Kotter is a professor of leadership at Harvard, as well as a best-selling author. One of his most famous books, Leading Change, outlines eight errors that cause corporate “change efforts” to fail. How many do you recognise? #1: Complacency In short, the organisation doesn’t create a great enough sense of urgency for the change.… Read More »
“Scrum Mastery is about servant leadership.” “The best leaders are servant leaders.” We hear statements like this a lot in our agile world. But what does it actually mean? It all started in 1970 with Robert K. Greenleaf’s essay “The Servant as Leader”. What does Servant Leadership mean? Greenleaf says that a great leader is,… Read More »
So you’re an “agile coach” day-to-day, but you want to get some sort of certification. Which one should you get? Here’s a summary of some of the most popular options. Agile Coach (ICP-ACC) ICAgile has a number of tracks, two of them relating to coaching: Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC) and Coaching Agile Transitions (ICP-CAT). ICAgile says… Read More »
When coaches start a new coaching engagement with an individual, it is usual for them to agree how they will work together. This is referred to as contracting. You will note that this is a verb (as in “to settle or establish by agreement”), rather than a noun (as in “the written form of such… Read More »
There are many frameworks promoted by coaching books and courses: Whitmore’s GROW, Prosci’s ADKAR, Bonham-Carter’s STAR, Full Potential Group’s CIGAR, Hawkins’ CLEAR to name just a few. Although they are all different in their detail and order, most are similar enough that they include: Establishing a goal, based on the client’s current situation Consideration of… Read More »
Starting a new project is exciting. The team is briefly the centre of attention, bringing a new hope to the organisation. Unfortunately, many teams charge into action without laying strong foundations. However, a bit of planning at the start of a project significantly increases the team’s chance of success. This is where a well-planned kick-off… Read More »
Some people love to spout a law, rule or formula to validate their opinion or explain a situation. Problem is, I can’t remember which law is which or the difference between various rules. So, for the last few weeks, we’ve been posting brief explanations of the most common ones. The final post in the series… Read More »