Agile Coaching, Agile Metrics, General Agile

No More Agile Checklists – Can We Concentrate on Outcomes?

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As an agile coach and change agent I am always asked how maturity can be measured at the team and organizational level. What I have found over the years is that there is no lack of different checklists that can be used to give us these “metrics”. In fact, a recent Google search gave me a page that contains links to literally 41 checklists. In addition to these I have personally worked on many different custom checklists myself as if the 41 currently available do not adequately address the needs of teams transitioning to agile! Why is it that these already existing measures are not enough?

Agile Development, Agile Quality, General Agile

We Must Inject (not just inspect) Quality

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Not sure where I first heard the phrase “you can’t inspect quality into a product” but I have certainly used the phrase myself all too often in my consulting gigs. After a quick Google search, I found the originator of the quote was Harold Dodge and it was first used in a manufacturing context. While I generally eschew appropriating manufacturing analogies for comparison to software development, in this case, it is certainly apt.

Agile Coaching, Agile Management, Agile Team, Blog, Leadership, SAFe

Individuals, Teams, Systems – The Evolution of Agile at Scale

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Once upon a time I coached one of the most amazing agile scrum teams. They were able to deliver things that their management found quite unbelievable so much so that they conveyed a meeting to find answers to why this particular group of people were able to so greatly outperform others in the organization. As an aside I was not originally invited to the meeting but the team lobbies for me to be there as they considered me one of the team and, as a team member, partially responsible for their success.

Agile Transitioning, Blog

The PMO is Dead. Long Live the PPMO!

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letters, typewriter

One of the most enjoyable parts of my work and my life is delivering presentations or giving talks to outside groups. During one particular Q&A session I was asked a question along these lines – “If you had unlimited power in an organization, what would be the very first thing you would do to ensure agility?”

My answer, “Oh that is easy. The very first thing I would do is get rid of the Project Management Office.” At which I unfortunately took a pause. The collective gasp from the crowd filled that void and the ensuing murmur drowned out my next statement. You see, I was addressing a PMI group, and my statement proved to be provocative to say the least.

Agile Management, Agile Team, Blog, General Agile, Leadership

The Gang of Four – How Optimization Perseveres

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room, lights, black and white

The impetus for the gang of four was the desire of four agilists (coaches) to try to do the right things with regards to implementing agile and scrum – to do things that were generally acknowledged as good agile practices but things that were not necessarily politically palatable. In other words, we were something of a clandestine organization.

Blog

Sony IT Insider Claims Hack Not From North Korea

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One of the contacts, who just happens to work at Sony, reached out to me this week and urged me to “blog to the world what really happened” and that the recent hack on Sony was not perpetrated by the North Korean government, but was one of a series of attacks that have been going on “for over two years”. According to my source, these recent attacks were part of a longer term “series of snooping breaches” that included “successful DDoS (denial of service) attacks during the World Cup based on Sony sponsorship of FIFA.”