Why did you embrace Agile over traditional project management as a developer?
Why did you embrace Agile over traditional project management as a developer? I didn’t get the opportunity to adopt agile whilst I was still a developer, that only came about because I was frustrated by the limitation of traditional project management that I was subject to while I was a developer. I worked through those […]
Does a client tell an agile consultant what they need, or does it work the other way around?
Does a client tell an agile consultant what they need, or does it work the other way around? I think it works the other way around, but in my experience, it is more complicated than that. Many clients initiate the consulting engagement with an agenda, so you are contracted to deal with specific things within […]
How do you think Agile is evolving since its inception in 2001?
How do you think Agile is evolving since its inception in 2001? I think agile has been evolving steadily, although not always in the way we would like to see. Hierarchy One of the central ideas expressed in the agile manifesto, and reinforced through the agile values and principles, is a shift from the traditional […]
How does scrum help leadership teams pick the most valuable work to focus on?
How does scrum help leadership teams pick the most valuable work to focus on? It doesn’t. Scrum is a lightweight agile framework; it has nothing in it that helps leadership teams pick the most valuable work to focus on. Sure, it provides a framework for decision-making, but it doesn’t do the work for you. Some […]
Why are recessions a great time for organizations to evaluate the opportunity of agile?
Why are recessions a great time for organizations to evaluate the opportunity of agile? I think it’s a bit deeper than simply exploring agile. The best time to invest in your marketing, sales efforts, people, and processes is when the world is a deeply troubled place. It’s when things go wrong that you need to […]
How would you help organizations pitch the opportunity of agile internally?
How would you help organizations pitch the opportunity of agile internally? It depends on whether you are managing up or down. Managing up. If you are working on a team or with a team and you want to adopt agile, but your organization is not yet ready to make the transition from project management to […]
Why did so many of the early agile transformations fail?
Why did so many of the early agile transformations fail? I think a better question is to ask why so many agile transformations fail, period, because the early agile transformations failed for the same reasons current agile transformations fail. Misalignment between implementation and decision-making. The people who are involved in the implementation are often not […]
What would be an example of a great agile consulting outcome for a client?
What would be an example of a great agile consulting outcome for a client? It’s an interesting question because a valuable outcome looks different for every customer. The ability to consistently deal with surprises. The reality of the complex world we work in is that things are consistently changing, being disrupted, or have a myriad […]
How much of an impact can a great agile consultant have?
How much of an impact can a great agile consultant have? I think that a great agile consultant can have a huge impact. An agile consultant doesn’t have an interest in hanging around. They aren’t looking to spend months or years in the client environment. They want to solve the problem or launch the opportunity, […]
How does scrum help leadership teams pick the most valuable work to focus on?
In simple or complicated environments such as civil engineering, traditional #projectmanagement is a great answer. You know what needs to be done, you know who is best positioned to do the work, and you know how long that will take and how much it will cost to do. Because it is complicated, it tends to […]