I remember thinking when I first started using Agile over fifteen years ago that you couldn’t use Agile for everything in an organisation. Five years later when I learnt of Kanban I began to rethink about whether that was true. I could see that it could be applied in a broader context outside of software …
What if the characters from Game of Thrones happened to be Product Owners? How would their personas come to live in Agile teams? Let’s see how some of our favourite characters as Agile Product Owners. Arya Stark – Stick bad ideas with the pointy end This is a PO take on Arya’s statement “Stick em’ …
Effective Executive Sponsors for Agile are a rare breed. In the VersionOne 11th Annual State of Agile Report 2017 the importance of Executive Sponsors is highlighted both to the success of scaling Agile and to mitigate challenges. This importance has grown dramatically over the last five years as Agile …
Is Agile dependent on culture or leadership support for success? I recently read Silence by Shusaku Endo. It is a book about the early missionaries to Japan in a turbulent time when they were not wanted (to an extent that they were actively sought out and tortured). As I read the book I was reminded …
When I was in Washington for the Agile Alliance 2015 conference I met up with Craig Smith and Christopher Avery for a podcast (unfortunately for me half way through). It was my first real introduction to the Leadership Gift and Responsibility Model. I had heard Craig talk to about the Leadership Gift a few times …
A North Korean Architect was commissioned to draw a futuristic version of North Korea with zero limits on both financial feasibility or even structural integrity. The result? In what seems straight out of a 1963 ‘The Jetsons’ episode, the architect seemed to produce drawing after drawing stuck in an era of decades past. Simplistic treehouses, ancient decor …
For those that have been on the Agile journey for a while this post will hopefully come as no surprise, but if you are fairly new on the journey I wanted to take the opportunity to clarify what I feel is a common misconception about Agile. In the early days of Agile we made it …
Recently reading Dan Pink’s Drive, I was mesmerised by a statement of leadership type classifications. I wondered whilst reading it if there was a way to short cut the interview process to get the right type of leader by asking the following question: We believe here at <Company X> that people fundamentally dislike work and …
It is highly regarded among many in the Agile community that: One of the most common causes of Agile transformational failure is due to either the lack of focus on or lack of effective change of the middle management layer. One of the more common successes of Agile transformations is when small, incremental or evolutionary change is …
I have been pondering lately what the purpose of a Scrum Master or Iteration Manager is. Many believe that it is a 100% full time role. Some are even concerned that there are formal positions springing up for this role. Here is my stance (and work in progress model) on the role: The purpose of …
Agile Forest 