Objections are caused by (a very natural) fear of change. Here are the two most common objections: We can’t forego documentation We can’t release to production whenever we want and therefore, Agile just isn’t made for us.
You Don’t Have to be A Chef To Open a Restaurant. Do you have to be a Scrum Master – or an Agile Practitioner – to be in the business of Agility? Don’t be limited by what roles and descriptions the industry has on offer Our industry needs to flex and change – YOU make that happen Look to roles that help spread and normalize Agile in areas that fit Design your Agile life, and start living it
Are you publishing? If not, why not? If you want to have a long-lasting career in Agile- or anything for that matter, you have to stand out. You have to have not only a calling card, but a body of work the demonstrates depth and commitment and wisdom – things of VALUE that you can bring to your client We all say “Agile lets us focus on customer value” – but what massive value do YOU bring to your clients, your teams and your end users?
In this episode, we discuss the importance of getting after it – not so much because earlier is better, but because is an example of a habit in the ‘doing what other’s won’t so you can have what others can’t’ category.
Transformation is a bit of a terrifying word. And yet, it seems to be a popular topic in enterprise agility circles these days. So what’s the problem and how can we approach it properly? Don’t seek total transformation. Create capability and spread it. It will transform as it grows As always, start with a vision – your why Don’t build against a scaling template just yet Create a culture of ‘elite’. Build something special that you have to work to belong to Balance your team Set targets and measu...
There are two kinds of Ice breakers – here are some examples of each from the episode: Ice breakers with purpose – questions that force people to think about their personal vision Who Inspires You, And Why? What would you do if you won the lottery? What would you do if you had 1 year to live? Or 1 week? What would you like more of/less of in your life? What do you lose sleep over? For whom are you most grateful? For what are you most grateful? If you could change any thing in the world, what wou...
As you are spreading agile within your organization or to clients, you’re going to be doing a lot of marketing and demonstrating. Something you’ll need to get good at doing quickly and without a script – or even much background – is converting a client vision into a backlog. Being able to go swiftly from idea to vision to prioritized backlog and scratch plan is an innovation enabler Make sure your vision describes value – the what and why – and then simplify it by breaking down into features You...
Efficiency is not about Doing More Things. You can work less, but direct your best energies toward IMPORTANT things – the highest priority things – and make a greater impact. You have to make sure your actions are backed by Intention – knowing what you intend to achieve with each action (how do you know if it’s complete? If its done right?) and knowing how each action rolls up to your greater vision/objective. Too often we fail to make time for this and just let the currents of our daily work ta...
In addition to our weekly release, we’re adding a short, unscripted contemplation of whatever is happening this week in Agile – whether its current events, musings on the industry, things I’m experiencing with clients – whatever grabs me. I plan to release these on Wednesdays and Fridays as time permits SO MAKE SURE you’ve subscribed to the Badass Agile podcast in your favourite player. For our first episode, I go a little deeper on Magic Bullets – why keeping things simple is important and why ...
This is an open letter to all Agile implementers and leaders. Are you trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? I love the Apollo 13 moment, but if you’re not in outer space and your crew isn’t about to die, you have to think more prudently about making square pegs fit into round holes We say Agile is no Magic Bullet, and then proceed to treat it like one Agile is a tool in a toolkit. Your job is to know where and when to properly apply it. Only when applied properly will you have success th...
We are accustomed to prioritizing backlogs – product and sprint – but we may not be as accustomed to prioritizing our day. This technique is often overlooked by teams, and yet how often do we find the day has gotten away from us because we made a choice to work on something that may not have been the highest-value target? The solution is easy and cheap – a pad of index-card sized sticky notes and a sharpie pen In no particular order, write down all your ‘todos’ for the day. It’s ok to include no...
How do you ‘perform’? When you have to deliver a performance – whether its a speech in front of an executive, your team or a large crowd, how do you show up? Performance Rituals might be the answer. The right rituals can radically change your effectiveness in meetings, negotiations, presentations or tough conversations Don’t count on your event magically ‘going well’. You have to be prepared….so take care to make scripts, save them, refine them and make them accessible so its easy to use them I’...
A Leader Has to Be Constantly Growing And Moving You need to have a backlog of items for your professional and leader development The areas I recommend are Education and Learning, Community, Professional Contribution, Mindset and Habit Upgrades, and Team Problem Solving You’re the product owner – keep the backlog current and prioritized, and execute every day.
Sooner or later, most leaders need to address emotional control. But how do you control emotions when they are automatic and sub-conscious reactions? Being mercurial, moody, or unpredictable is great for keeping people terrified, but not for building trust, loyalty and performance As a leader, or as anyone looking to build/improve success, you have to know what triggers emotional behaviour and what it costs you The secret is to build a shark tank – a slight delay or barrier between events and yo...
It’s not uncommon to find people feeling very disconnected from their work. Sometimes an individual’s passion and purpose is connected to their work in the team room, and sometimes, it’s not. Sometimes they may not know what their passion and purpose is….we’ve talked about methods for finding and connecting purpose in previous episodes, but is there a quicker, simpler way? Ask your team to Think and Act Like an Owner If this were a startup, and you were funding the initiative, you would be less ...
In North America, our lives are increasingly defined by the amount of stress we can shoulder. The ability to ‘push a little harder’ each year is considered a mark of dedication and achievement – but should it really be that way? Is success really about maximum effort? Tension and anxiety are not only pervasive in our society, they are also lethal. You can see the impacts of stress everywhere on people’s health and happiness In nature, too much or too little of anything throws the system out of b...
Agility is surrounded with the expectation that things will happen quickly – teams will ramp up fast, agility will spread quickly and easily, and projects will immediately start delivering value faster. What’s the right mindset to have about speed in Agile practice? As the saying goes, you have so slow down before you can speed up. If you slow down and execute with precision and quality, you will be – and appear – faster than if you hurry through things and create more mistakes Teams need to lea...
How do legendary performers become legendary? What separates them from the rest of the vastly talented, inspired and hard working people in the world? I believe it’s the habit of constantly moving the goal post forward. You can never rest on what you’ve just done, and you definitely cannot take shortcuts or look for ‘easy’ You have to make a habit of asking the question – how could we get 1-2 percent better next time? You do this at the team and the individual level...
Is this the end for the Agile Coach? Have we reached the summit of our useful lives? If Coaching is dead, it is incumbent on all Agile leaders then to find the next thing, the next level of improvement and performance The notion that ‘everyone gets it now, we’re just fine, thanks’ is the same thing as telling a major league baseball team that we’ve seen enough batting practice, and that we don’t need advice on how to improve anymore The coaches job is to continually excel, experiment, and stay o...
What are the most common questions that I get from listeners and clients? In this episode, I address the 10 questions I get most commonly from listeners and clients, including what to do about estimation across multiple teams, how to break through resistant mindsets within the team and the leadership, and how to get more badass in general.
The nature of Scrum is a cycle. Every two weeks feels like a brand new mission. Sometimes, its easy to lose sight of the overall vision and lose our sense of passion and shared purpose. A Sprint Theme, or Vision, can help with that. Use the sprint theme not as a list of work or stories to complete in the next two weeks, but as a commitment to changing the world – what is the most important thing we can achieve in this upcoming increment? It can be stories or features but it also can be improveme...
One of the badass leadership principles is Ask for Forgiveness, not for Permission. That scares a lot of people. So how do you really integrate that into your badass life and practice? You never want to be reckless or insubordinate, but you definitely want to encourage your teams to own solutions and decisions I believe it is as reckless to hold up product with desire for certainty – sign offs, consensus, approvals Just make sure you have general vision and direction from leadership/product owne...
To fully live Agile values of frequent value delivery, self-organizing teams, continuous improvement, face-to-face communication – WHILE maintaining high standards for design and quality requires something most people don’t have enough of, and it’s one of my favourite topics. Discipline. Everything you learn about Agile, Scrum, and any other framework is designed to do one thing – create and harness disciplined action. To do effective things repeatedly until they become habits, and then to build...
Building a Tribe Requires that You Set a High Bar for Quality. Excellence. Vision. Dedication. Ethos. To do any less is to guarantee the dilution of the tribe’s effectiveness. But how do you find people like that? Start with the Willing. Bring in the people who show the most passion. Passion will allow them to work harder and stay the course during tough times Passion will make it easier for you to trust them Passion decouples performance from external motivators Passion makes for better creativ...
Leadership has to change in lockstep with changes in society, culture, and values We can’t lead the same way as we did 100 years ago…or even 20 years ago. The core traits of a leader in this age is not to manage and inspect work, but to inspire, set vision, care for and protect people, and to build trust with and within teams
So Your Agile Practice is Broken. Your Centre of Excellence Isn’t Excellent. Your teams are not moving with agility, and your product is not faster, nor cheaper, nor better. This isn’t what we were promised. What Happened? Until you trust people and let them do excellent work that inspires them, the rest of Agile/Scrum won’t bring you any benefit at all. Empowered teams = trusting your people Trusting People means letting them find their passion, letting them set their own targets and measures, ...
How do you take the elegance and simplicity of Agile and apply to complex, large scale organizations? Part of the answer is determining if we ‘should’ scale agile – or at least if we should try to make it fit every problem Certain problems don’t lend themselves to iterative or continuous delivery because there’s no sensible way to deliver value partially, or early Sometimes the problem is with organizational culture – agile doesn’t work if we’re impatient, focused on speed of savings, or mistrus...
If you are starting with an in-flight team, and trying to get them more agile, the easiest place to start is the stand up. It’s the smallest, the most frequent, AND the most important ceremony for moving work forward. Start there, and then build the other practices by gradually introducing backlogs, sprints, planning, and maintenance. You can fold in retrospectives and sprint reviews, Start by aggressively cutting waste – getting an hour down to 15 minutes or less by the end of the week – To do ...
There’s only one reason you should listen to this podcast. If you want to learn Agile technique or get opinions on the latest developments…there are so many shows and resources that do that extremely well. But if you’re interested in how the study of Agile mindset can create massive returns not just for the companies you work for, but for the people who live and work in them, how you can bring fulfilment and return autonomy to its rightful place – the hearts and minds of the people you meet and ...
As leaders, it is enough to instruct, motivate or even inspire people to meet a list of yearly targets? Or is there a different kind of leader? Someone who breaks through what was previously considered possible? I frequently talk about elite leadership; the idea that there is a special kind of leader, called to make a remarkable difference in their teams, organizations and communities A life of distinction implies you are constantly looking to break the 4-minute mile; to do the impossible; the t...
