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Agile Mindset

Handling Reminisces of a Glorious Waterfall Past

As a coach, I’ve had several opportunities to be involved in the process of big organizations moving from waterfall to agile. You usually start with frowning faces, people coming to meetings reluctantly, armed with a load of cynicism and skepticism. Then after some time, something magical happens – things change to the better. Spring has arrived!

During those first months, at the beginning of the implementation, times are hard. People are struggling. And very soon you start to hear complaints and people telling you how great it was before all this. Before all this agile. When design documents were design documents. When they had time to work. Suddenly the past becomes a lost haven. In training, in coaching sessions, you hear people reminiscing about some glorious past.

The key to addressing these issues is to find out how exactly was it at those times.

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Agile Marketing

Kanban for Marketing Kick-start Example

It is a slightly modified version of Henrik Kniberg’s Kanban Kick-Start Example that he graciously shared using a creative commons license. Why do we need a marketing version you ask? Because we find that people connect better to examples in their own domain so talking about code and development doesn’t really work well with marketers… Feel free to take this one and adapt it for your use and share alike! (Here’s a PowerPoint version you can edit)

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Agile Leadership

If they self-organize, what is our role as team leads?

“If they self-organize, what is our role as team leads?”

This is one tough question my managers asked me when I proposed we give eXtreme Programming a try. At the time, this question made me feel very uneasy, and I had a hard time providing some good answers. 15 years later, I think I finally have finally come to terms with the tough issue of management and self-organization.

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Agile Mindset

From Utilization to Done

There is this thing.

It’s coming up again and again.

I would say it is the root of all evil.

At least some of it.

I am referring to the need of many software development managers to make sure all their employees are fully utilized. It usually surfaces when you start talking about real team work or about agile execution.

Having all your employees fully utilized is not a bad thing for itself. It is just not the goal. The goal is to get software development done. The problem starts when “people fully utilized” gets in the way of getting software development done.

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Agile Tools

Agile Practices using Jira Atlassian

The more we meet software development organizations, the more we see how Jira, the most popular ALM tool out there, is being misused.  Abusing the tool is quite easy actually… Paraphrasing Tolstoy’s words from Anna Karenina, “Good Jira implementations are all alike but unhappy implementations are all unhappy in their own way”. (In AgileSparks we keep a warm place for the classics). We have seen many cases where the abuse of the tool caused frustrations and inconsistencies with the Agile mindset that put at risk the ability to benefit from Agile practices adopted by the organization.

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Scaling Agile

Comparing and choosing scaled agile approaches (or not scaling at all? )

The subject of my talk today was “Introduction to Lean/Agile scaling approaches” where talked about why scaling approaches are necessary and when to actually try to de-scale as well as gave a very brief introduction to a couple of the key frameworks we typically use – SAFe, Large Scale Scrum, Spotify’s approach, Connected kanbans.  I then finished with some decision criteria questions to ask yourself as you’re starting this journey.

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Agile Mindset

The Great Waterfall Trip

Every summer my uncle Josh and his wife Nancy go on a big trip to see a famous waterfall. They love waterfalls. Sometimes it seems to me my uncle even loves preparing for the trip more than the trip itself.

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Agile Marketing

Agile Marketing Validation Board

“Validated Learning Over Opinions and Conventions” is the first value in the Agile Marketing Manifesto. A couple of weeks ago I was helping form what we call a “Marketing Agile Release Train” – a group of Agile Marketing teams each focused on supporting the business activities of a key product/solution in a large portfolio. The way we do this is typically a combination of some Agile Marketing training followed up by actual high-level planning of their first quarter followed by a deep dive into their first iterations/sprints.

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Agile Mindset

Develop it when it’s ripe

We need good metaphors to better understand software development. Good metaphors from our day to day can help us better understand this elusive domain.

Some time ago I wrote about traffic and not long ago I wrote about handling scope the same way you would handle a growing garden. In this short article, I would like to discuss the great opportunity for a better understanding of software development, hidden in fruits. Yes, fruits.

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