Scrum is made up of Influencers, Entrepreneurs, and Makers

In the empirical world, we have 3 key skill areas of accountability that are needed to effectively deliver products of the highest possible value! We need Influencers that can provide leadership and create environments within which groups of people can organise the work. I consider this the Leadership Track where you have Scrum Masters, Coaches, […]

Become the leader that you were meant to to be

Leadership is not about control, but about inspiring those around you. Managers transition to Leaders As organisations move towards modern management practices there will be less of a need for Managers. However that does not mean that those same people are not needed! Their role is shifting from managing people, to managing effectiveness and leading […]

Sprint Goal is an Immediate Tactical Goal

In the The Evidence-Based Management Guide we talk about the Intermediate Strategic Goal and I likened that to the Product Goal in the 2020 Scrum Guide. If we also think of each Sprint as a tactical move towards fulfilling that Product Goal then the Sprint Goal becomes an Intermediate Tactical Goal that moves us towards […]

Story Points & Velocity are a sign of an unsuccessful team

Story Points and velocity have been used for many years in the Scrum community and have been engrained so much in the way that things are done that most folks believe that they are part of Scrum. The accepted wisdom is that Scrum Teams are supposed to use User Stories, Story Points, and Velocity to […]

Evidence-based Management: Gathering the metrics

Gathering the metrics for Evidence-based Management in software organisations can be a strenuous task and I have a number of customers that are fretting on what to collect and from where. Here I try to create an understanding of the ‘what’ that we need to collect.

Professional Scrum teams build software that works

I am always surprised at the number of teams that release undone work to production. I understand that one may need a few sprints, or many if you inherited something nasty, to pay back that debt, but if it’s more then you are not a Professional Scrum Team. The sheer amount of software that I […]

Update to the Scrum Guide on the 25th Anniversary of the Scrum Framework

It has been 25 years since Scrum was first created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland and it has gone through many revisions. The last major revision was in 2017 and this update represents a simplification for 2020. New updates include simplified language, less prescriptive and emphasis on the Scrum Team and its need to […]

Online is the new co-located

In light of the new normal and the last 20 years of technological progress, we need to re-define co-location as we no longer need to be in the same room as each other to get the 80% of communication that is non-verbal. If we are participating in an online event, we should try our best […]

Evolution not Transformation: This is the Inevitability of change

There is no such thing as an Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, DevOps Transformation, or any of the Whatever Transformation that you can think of or have been sold. You can’t buy agility, and you certainly can’t install it. There is no end state, no optimal outcome, No best practices. We are no longer factory workers.

Luddites have no place in the modern organisation

In our Professional Agile Leadership training, we talk about changing your organisations hiring practices to hire more of the right sort of people to create the company that you want, not the company that you have. Hire the right people also implies that you will have to, within your cultural constraints, de-hire the wrong people. […]