The Urgent Call for Agile Organisational Transformation
As we progress deeper into the dynamic landscape of the 21st century, our long-established organisations, born of the Industrial Age and infused with a DNA of strict command and control, stand on shaky ground. These organisations strut with command-and-control bravado, erecting clear hierarchies in their stable inert markets where bureaucracy reigns supreme. However, they are feeling the tremors of a rapidly evolving, technologically charged dynamic markets and are plagued by sluggish responses and missed opportunities, which are their Achilles heel in these new fast-paced markets. Not since the 1970s has the classic hierarchical model, rooted in the stagnant waters of stable markets, been a viable proposition for companies seeking to thrive in an era of unprecedented change and unpredictability. Clearly, we cannot continue to coat deep-seated hierarchical practices with a thin veneer of modern innovation and expect sustainable transformation.
Embrace Uniqueness: Why Creating Your Own Scaling Practices Leads to Business Success
Business Leaders face a key challenge when scaling their organisations effectively while maintaining the distinctiveness that made us successful in the first place. Many frameworks and methodologies, such as Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) or the Spotify Model, promise a structured approach to scaling, but do they genuinely fit our unique needs? In this post, I aim to highlight the importance of creating our own scaling practices, highlighting that successful commercial software organizations have thrived by embracing their distinctiveness rather than adopting standardized approaches.
Announcing Professional Agile Leadership with Evidence-Based Management Training (PAL-EBM) from Scrum.org
I have been an accredited Evidence-based Management Expert with Scrum.org for the last 7 years and I have been using the Evidence-based Management Guide to encourage leaders to make decisions based on evidence instead of gut feel.
Hiring a Professional Product Owner
One of my customers is asking me about the accountabilities of a Product Owner and how they break down. While I had seen many things around the Scrum Master for my post on Hiring a Professional Scrum Master , this was a little bit more of a discovery session, which is why I asked some of my trusted colleagues at Scrum.org to help out.
Stop normalizing unprofessional behaviour in the name of agility
In Scrum Events across the world, I hear repeated the phrase “that’s how agile works” when describing behaviours that are both unprofessional and the very opposite of an agile mindset. These behaviours will inhibit agility and are a result of a lack of understanding of the underlying principles.
Hiring a Professional Scrum Master
One of my customers is hiring for the Scrum Master Role and asked if I had a handy-dandy Scrum Master Job Spec that they could use. I did not, but there have been a few good ones floating around in the ether so I thought that pulling one together would be a good idea anyway. Here is my best effort to use the existing job postings, and combine them with the latest version of the Scrum Guide.
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, and CEO. We need Entrepreneurs who can have a vision and project knowledge and understanding of that vision to the people that need to make that vision happen. This is the Value Track and may be made up of Product Owners, Analysts, and Subject Matter Experts. Last we have the Makers who are the ones who do the work that brings the product to life. They are on the Technical Track and focus on turning the vision into a reality. They have many skills and may have coders, testers, and other experts…
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 people!
All technical debt is a risk to the product and to your business.
If you were buying a car, or a TV, you as the purchaser would do your best to understand the product that you are buying, the quality tradeoffs, and the capabilities.
Professional Kanban Trainer for Applying Professional Kanban
The Scrum Guide only contains the minimum necessary to create an empirical process control system for managing risk. The new Kanban Guide reflects the minimum that you need to do to create a strategy for optimizing the flow of value through a visual, pull-based system.
