John Wooden, head coach of the UCLA Bruins basketball team from 1948 until 1975, is considered to be one of the greatest coaches of all time. But no one would have expected him to help a startup form agile teams, or master Scrum. Of course not: Coaching a team to…

Getting to the Heart of Why Scrum Works in Some Situations, and Not Others — A few months back I promoted someone internally to be our new marketing coordinator. This person had been with my company (Sketch Development) for many years already as an office manager and video producer. So he was intimately familiar with what we do, and what we teach. …

You’re Not Agile Just Because You Say, Think, and Feel Like You Are Imagine investing thousands of dollars in exercise equipment and setting it up in the garage. Imagine then, after having maybe used it once or twice and letting it collect dust, you insist to a friend that you’re actually getting in shape. That’s a clunky example, but it bears out when…

You’re Not Agile Just Because You Say, Think, and Feel Like You Are — Imagine investing thousands of dollars in exercise equipment and setting it up in the garage. Imagine then, after having maybe used it once or twice and letting it collect dust, you insist to a friend that you’re actually getting in shape. That’s a clunky example, but it bears out when…

Product ownership not working within your organization? You might have a larger problem on your hands. — If there’s one role in agile frameworks that is the most misunderstood, it’s the role of product owner. In some organizations, the title of “product owner” becomes synonymous with “product manager.” (Or worse, project manager). …

One of the biggest problems getting started with a development project — especially one where some of the work is being outsourced — is getting over the need for a concrete plan at the start of the project. I suspect this is because many people are mistakenly confusing having a…

Whenever I run an agile bootcamp or Scrum certification training, I spend some time letting the attendees discuss what they think Scrum is, and trying to get them to think of Scrum as a framework (rather than, say, a fixed set of processes). But then it occurred to me to…

One of the first signs that a project is in trouble is that milestones aren’t met and deadlines get blown. When that happens, most project/product managers start adding capacity to get back on track. But consider: When was the last time you were on the freeway in the middle of…

If You Think You’ll Ever Consider Hiring an Agile Shop — Read This First True story: We have a client who started working with one of our development teams a few years ago. She came from a traditional IT background. Before she even engaged us, she decided to scope out…