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🫸 Stop arguing over frameworks and methodologies!
These are NOT what makes you agile. 🌱 The grass is always greener on the other side. Debating whether scrum or kanban or something else is better will not get you anywhere. Sure, some are a better fit for certain circumstances; but if you arent‘t agile, neither choice...
How long is your backlog?
If you start having trouble finding stories – or wondering whether the story is already in there somewhere – your backlog is probably too long 😅 The idea of a product backlog is that of a short-term buffer. A backlog lasting about 6 weeks is good; a backlog lasting 6...
How to slow down your business
If you can change direction every 2 weeks 🐆, but you only decide to change direction once a year 🐌, you‘re not agile. Agility is far too often confined to the delivery organization. But without agility on the portfolio level, you‘re not actually using that delivery...
Your budgeting kills agility!
Agility is much more than teaching teams to deliver in sprints. If your goal is to tackle the challenges of today, you'd better become agile on all levels. Traditional budgeting often works somewhat like this: 👏 Management decides to pursue a business opportunity🤦...
Are you sweating over picking the right agile framework?
Whether you use SAFe, LeSS, Scrum, Kanban … is NOT the important success factor for agility. Just as picking the best electric guitar is not gonna make you a rock star. 🎸 Frameworks and models are just 20% of what makes you agile. What really makes or breaks agility?...
Are you afraid of user feedback?
While sprint reviews or system demos are meant to focus on feedback from users, so that you can deliver more value… …some PMs and POs are afraid that user feedback could challenge their plans/backlogs. What I see play out almost every week is the struggle to adopt an...
Have the damn guts to walk out on a meeting!
Take responsibility for your own productive time! Agility is about autonomy. Autonomy means you‘re responsible for your time. Sitting through meetings just because somebody invited you is not a responsible use of your time. 👉 Have the courage to decline meeting...
Transparency is damn misunderstood by many!
🚨 Transparency doesn't mean that management can see everything the team does. Transparency means: 👉 The team can see everything management does. 👉 The team can see everything it does itself (reflection). Transparency is supposed to EMPOWER teams, not to control them!...
A sprint review or system demo without stakeholders is useless.
How many times have you seen sprint reviews without stakeholders? I must admit, I have seen this far too often in my life. And it's a waste of time! Why is it useless? First we have to ask, what the purpose of a review is. I often get answers like: 🤔 to see the...
Leadership is a relationship 🙌
Leadership is not something one person does! It's a relationship between leader and follower. A leader without a follower is not a leader. If you want to be a great leader, ask the people who you want to follow you what they expect from you. Then act accordingly....
Agility is NOT what many companies move towards with their transformation
The meme shows a typical evasive move commonly camouflaged as “Agile Transformation“. Sometimes it‘s a deliberate evasion technique, sometimes it‘s subconscious. What makes you agile is not a set of roles or the implementation of a framework. What makes you agile is a...
The simple 7-step guide for awesome Retrospectives 🙌
Retrospectives often end up as “letting off steam” or “endlessly discussing problems” events. That’s not helpful. Retros should help a team continuously improve! They should feel positive and have impact 🚀 Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough;...
Want faster time-to-market? Increase your decision-making speed!
Want faster time-to-market? Increase your decision-making speed! Many delays in building products come from long decision-making processes. In this time and age, hardly any company can afford to have a slow decision-making process. Some factors slowing down decision...
What makes or breaks an Agile Transformation?
Is it the framework you pick? Is it the tools you use? Is it how many teams dutifully exercise their sprints? I often see significant focus on choosing a scaling framework, teaching people how to do method xyz and picking "agile" tools. 🤔🤨🧐 But that is only...
💥 The rocket exploded. So why did SpaceX pop champagne?
("The rocket exploded. So why did SpaceX pop champagne?" is a quote from The New York Times) I know many leaders who wouldn't have congratulated their people on the explosion of a big project on launch day. The quality of good leadership is to recognize your role and...
Without a goal, Sprint Plannings are wasted time 😳
Sprints need a goal! Just handing out unconnected stories to developers is NOT agile. Product Owners are not only responsible to create and have a product vision, they're also responsible to COMMUNICATE that vision to the developers. 🛑 Stop handing out tasks to...
Almost done – how to ruin your agility with unfinished user stories at the end of a sprint in Scrum!
What to do with an almost finished story at the end of the sprint? Finish it? Carry it over? Put it back? Count 90% of the story points? 100%? 0%? We cannot predict the future. Unexpected things will happen and void our plans – no matter how thorough we plan. That is...
How do agile teams rehearse?
"An important success factor for bands are rehearsals and sound checks to deliver a good performance. How do agile project teams "rehearse"?" This was a wonderful question from the audience at my talk "Music & Agility". I want to reply with this article. When...