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Agile Mindset

Keeping The PI Planning Momentum

In his book, “Confessions of a Public Speaker,” Scott Berkun tells us that when speaking, once the lights go out, you have everyone’s attention. Then you need to fight to avoid attrition.

In a similar fashion, at the end of the SAFe PI Planning event you have the entire organization’s attention (read more about it in a small post I published some time ago called “PI Planning Magic!”), and as time passes you start losing it.

The question is how do you keep this attention and energy, climaxed at the final confidence vote where everyone raises their hands to indicate their belief in the plan, throughout the Program Increment (PI).

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Agile Mindset

Estimating – Do You Trust Your Ability To Execute?

Sometimes you need to pack a suitcase.

One way of doing it would be to have a list of how many socks, shirts etc. can the suitcase hold, then prepare these items and pack them into the suitcase. This should work, I think, but there are a few problems. First, you need to have this list ready for each suitcase. Second, well, it would be difficult to prepare such a list due to the unstable nature of clothes: wrinkling, moving, and in general the tendency of not having a steady shape.

However, the main problem with this method is that it takes a lot of time. You need to constantly check the number of items against the list, write down how many you have etc.

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Agile Mindset

Seize The Improvement Opportunity!

Sometimes it is right there before us and all we need to do is to reach out and take it. Improvement opportunities are there – all we need to do is learn how to identify them and invest the minimal time to turn the opportunity into something real.

A good indication of an improvement opportunity hanging around is when something really good or really bad happens.

For example, I am working with a client where seven development teams are struggling for some time to better work together. One of the problems we were having was that features didn’t complete – didn’t move to Done. This week we had a deadline and the teams worked very hard and managed to get the important things done. They worked hard but you saw the spark in their eyes – They were very happy and proud about it.

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Agile Mindset

When Scrum Events Are Burdening

At the beginning of a Scrum implementation y, you usually finds two main types of team behaviors. Those who embrace the scrum events (Planning, daily, etc.) and try to better understand them to represent one type. There are many issues and many required adjustments and the team is working on them with the coach.

Other teams view Scrum events as a total waste of time. They do them reluctantly and don’t see any value in it. What do you do? We’ve had several such cases and we wanted to better understand what’s going on there. After a deeper look into the dynamics of these teams, we reached some conclusions that let us sleep better at night.

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Agile Leadership

Experiencing Self-Selection of feature teams

Lately I had the opportunity and pleasure to facilitate a process of designing cross-functional feature teams in a self-selection process. Self-selection is a facilitated way to let people choose which team to work in. It is surprising how rare this practice is sometimes even considered eccentric while practically it is a simple and fast and produces such great results – well-formed teams with more involved and engaged people.

Why teams self-selection?

It’s a fast engaging process that creates the best conditions for a team to reach high performance.

It’s based on the assumption that with the appropriate context, people will choose to work in a team that they feel will make them be most productive, taking into account the personal relationships with the other team members, the complementary skills they bring and their aspirations for personal and professional development.

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Agile Mindset

Getting into a teaching mindset

Being mindful of the teaching mindset

I wear many hats at AgileSparks – what you might call a T-Shaped sparkie… Every week I can find myself wearing the consultant hat, the marketer hat, the thought leader hat, the trainer hat, the conference speaker hat, the head of business in the United States hat and probably a few more that I’m forgetting. Switching hats requires a context switch which we know is tough but also requires a mindset switch.

Specifically, what I found over the years is that going into a teaching mindset is something I need to pay some extra attention to. This goes beyond making sure I’m comfortable with the materials I’m going to deliver, reviewing the facilitator’s guide, etc.

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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 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 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 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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