Articles
The User Story: Demystified
Pssst…You’re Allowed to Stop Using Jargon
What To Do In the First 90 Days as a Scrum Master
Why I’m NOT a SAFe Trainer
Common Complaint: “Scrum Doesn’t Work Here!”
From the Trenches: Small Batches for the Win
The Worst of the Worst #DevLife Jokes
It was grueling. Brutal. Torturous! I curated the most insufferable jokes about product development. Scrum Master jokes
How To Prevent Another Phoenix Pay System Inferno
An IT system called Phoenix was meant to replace old payroll systems in Canada’s federal government. They estimated it would cost $5.7…
Design Agencies Are Fun, Development Teams Are Stressful
“Development contracts keep me awake at night. Design contracts don’t.” Meet Alex. Those are her words. Alex is Product Manager with a…
Throwback Thursday: AgileQuestions 2011
What Is Scrum?
What Is Kanban?
Someone Made Up ‘SDLC’ And Everyone Went Along With It
Sometimes ‘Transparency’ Just Means Not Lying
I am a Professional Kanban Trainer with ProKanban.org
A Story of Release Gates: An Antipattern
Antipattern: A pattern that may be commonly used but is ineffective and/or counterproductive in practice. A few years ago, I was hired…
Continuous Deployment Is Now Table Stakes
Dear software development manager, Excellent software teams can deploy code multiple times per day. Deploying code multiple times per day…
No Longer Tolerate ‘Blocked’ or ‘Waiting’ States
1 Month ago, I shared a thought at LinkedIn and the response was significant. It’s nice to see widespread agreement that this one, simple…
Empowerment Retro
Team Retrospective — “Feeding the Machine for Corporate Review Season”
An Agile Not-for-Profit Organization
Certification Path for UX Leads
Starting with APS (Applying Professional Scrum), a crash-course in iterative & incremental product development with self-organizing teams, a…
Certification Path for Testers
Starting with APS (Applying Professional Scrum), a crash-course in iterative & incremental product development with self-organizing teams, a…
Certification Path for Solutions Architects
What Is a Solutions Architect (SA)? In my experience, Solutions Architect is a job title applied to one of these two roles: A developer…
Certification Path for Scrum Masters
Great Scrum Masters have a well-developed interpersonal intelligence (an eye for team dynamics), excellent group-facilitation skills, broad…
Certifications: “If I Were You…”
Considerations for Individuals — My Advice When people ask me about training and certification, the conversation often goes like this:…
Certification & Training Paths for Agile Practitioners
Context I’ll not hide my bias toward the Scrum.org and ProKanban.org certifications. Other organizations may provide similar courseware…
“Can we use Scrum with ‘remote’ staff?”
A Common Question People Ask I keep hearing from Scrum trainers that Scrum is not for remote teams. Is there any truth to that? The…
Does Your Team Produce ‘Bugs’?
Defining Distributed, Remote, Co-located, and Dislocated Teams
The Problem With so much discussion about teams and their work environments, it’s important we be careful with terminology…
Velocity: Escape this Pitfall!
The map below illustrates a classic problem with the common use of 'velocity' as a metric. Scenario Your family travels each weekend to…
I am a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org
Roughly 600 people worldwide are authorized, by the authors of Scrum, to teach Scrum. I am honoured to be part of that expert community. I…
The Art of Agile Product Documentation
A Workshop Facilitation Guide This sense-making workshop helps teach a team how to simplify valuable documentation and reduce wasteful…
Looking for Work as a Scrum Master? Choose Wisely.
It appears to me there are more jobs available for Scrum Masters than ever before! Why is it so hard for some people to find employment…
Canada’s Phoenix Payroll Catastrophe
What is the Phoenix Pay System? The Phoenix system is one of Canada’s most amazing blunders. It’s a multi-billion dollar failed project. In…
A Scrum Team Increases Their Velocity by Doing Less Work
A discussion is raging at LinkedIn about the Iron Triangle because the co-authors of Scrum say that “Scrum breaks the Iron Triangle…
A Week in the Life of a Scrum Team
A Workshop Facilitation Guide The purposes of this activity are twofold: To illustrate a few of the many real challenges that Scrum Masters…
A Book Review: “The Great ScrumMaster”, by Zuzana Šochová
In Brief Buy it. You won’t be disappointed. In Depth I read the book in 3 sittings. The First Sitting Zuzi gave her book to me in October…
Etymology of ‘Management’
I was studying the etymology of ‘management’ recently. I made a Sankey Diagram with D3js based on Mike Bostock’s awesome Javascript and…
A Lean Startup is Going to Eat Your Lunch
Warning: Your competitors are not the patient type. One of the most common pitfalls I see in companies trying to employ Agile practices…