a·gen·tic a·gil·i·ty

What does your dream agile consulting week look like?

Discover how the Applied Professional Scrum (APS) approach helps teams identify and remove ineffective practices, strengthen core Scrum principles, and drive agile transformation.

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Empowering Teams with the APS Approach: Elevating Your Scrum Journey

In the dynamic and ever-evolving realm of Scrum, where teams and organisations strive to harness their full potential, the Applied Professional Scrum (APS) stands out as a guiding light for authentic Scrum Mastery.  💡

Through years of hands-on involvement and traversing diverse Scrum landscapes, I’ve had the privilege of discovering the many benefits and intricacies of APS.

My Agile journey has been filled with both challenges and triumphs and has enriched my understanding and highlighted the profound capabilities of APS.

These insights reveal its unmatched depth, offering transformative strategies and practices that serve as invaluable assets for individuals ardently pursuing the path of Scrum mastery.  🚀

A Firm Footing in Scrum’s Core Principles

A principle I have steadfastly anchored to and often share is this: You must have a working, usable product at the end of every iteration.

Veering away from this ethos means we’re straying from the core of agility.

We absolutely need these tangible, working products as they allow us to test, iterate, and gain pivotal feedback.  🚀

The Tale of Scrum and its Barnacles

My frequent analogy draws parallels from the sailing realm and describes Scrum teams as boats. Over time, boats will accumulate barnacles that, while appearing minuscule, can dramatically hamper their speed.

Similarly, seasoned Scrum teams often pick up a bunch of barnacles in the form of practices that were perhaps introduced to solve a fleeting issue or satisfy a specific organisational need.

In its wisdom, APS equips us with a discerning eye to scrape off those barnacles, helping us discern between the essential pillars of Scrum and the redundant ones we might have unconsciously adopted.

APS’s Signature: The Barnacle Exercise 🔄

Among the myriad of APS sessions I’ve facilitated, the “Barnacle Exercise” still holds a special place with me and remains extremely effective.

Through this introspective task, teams—be they newbies or veterans—are empowered to recognise and shed their own ‘barnacles’. When diving deep into Agile practices within their organisations, as this exercise evolves, leading to the creation of an organisational change backlog.

This blueprint, an agile transformation roadmap, is a testament to the hands-on, collaborative essence of APS.  🎯

APS: Nurturing Authentic, Proficient Scrum Teams

At its heart, APS is unwavering in its mission, which is to equip teams with the precise tools and insights to excel.

The ultimate aim is to foster teams that are not merely superficially performing Scrum but truly embody its spirit—authentically and adeptly.  🎯

Embark on Your APS Journey with Insight and Mastery

For those set on the Scrum path, aiming to extract the maximum value from every stride, I wholeheartedly invite you to immerse yourself in the APS experience.

Engage, reflect, and elevate.   🌟

I’m here to guide and collaborate with you along your Agile journey.

Let’s connect through Naked Agility and script your unique Scrum success narrative.

What does your dream and your consulting week look like?

It looks pretty busy, I think, right? So there’s two. When I’m consulting with a customer, there’s multiple work streams going on, right? There’s work streams where you’re liaising with leadership and trying to encourage the larger changes that maybe need to happen. But there’s also the day-to-day work of sitting in with teams and helping them get suggestions, right?

Because that’s the difference between coaching and consulting. Coaching believes that the customer already knows the answer, and consulting doesn’t assume that they already know the answer. As a consultant, I’m going to make a suggestion, right? Well, maybe we should monitor the flow of work. Have you been collecting these metrics? Maybe we can figure that out. Here’s some tools that you might use with the tools you’ve got in order to understand and visualize more. Let’s try that, right? So you’re making more proactive and directing suggestions based on long experience.

For me, the most awesome week is a week where I’m able to help as many people in the organization as possible while still continuing to make progress on the overall strategic initiatives, right? Because ultimately, strategic initiatives are long term and don’t help people day-to-day.

So I really enjoy working with teams, perhaps sitting in on some of their events, right? It could just be a daily, you know, fly on the wall. I’m not going to interrupt them. I’m not going to make suggestions during those events, but I’m going to have a chat with them afterwards, perhaps just with the Scrum Master, right? Because it’s kind of their, I don’t want to step on their toes either, but help give them advice, point them in directions, and help them see the gaps, maybe in what the team’s understanding and their knowledge, and how they can perhaps fulfill them and how they can fill their own gaps.

So for me, constantly engaging with teams while also dealing with the long-term leadership and strategic stuff is probably my dream week as an agile consultant.

Thanks for watching the video. If you enjoyed it, please like, follow, and subscribe. I always reply to comments, and if you want to have a chat about this or anything else agile, scrum, or DevOps, then please book a coffee with me.

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