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What If We Could Go Back To Change The Future?

As a coach, I know I should meet people where they are. Put myself in their shoes and empathize with what’s going on in their world. To simply be with them as they struggle. And after sharing with them what I’m noticing followed by some powerful questions, the hope is they will take action, and learn from it to change where they are. This is easier to do with some than with others. With…

Self-Organizing Product Managers?

One of the greatest benefits from Agile ways of working is the metamorphosis of a disparate collection of independent thinking individuals into a cohesive team of codependent individuals bonded together by a common goal and vision, all rowing in the same direction. From fully dependent teams waiting to be told… What to do When to do it How to do It Who to do it with To semi-autonomous…

#Self-organizing #management

Customer Disservice

How many customers can you serve at the same time before you’re no longer serving any of them? Standing in line waiting to be served as a customer is a common, everyday occurrence for most of us. Waiting is not enjoyable. But it’s necessary to maintain order when there are others also wanting to be served. Whether it’s at a bank, restaurant, grocery store or retail shop, there are commonly…

#customer service rant

Fear of Failure

Nobody likes to fail. When we fail, we try to turn it into a positive: Some say they learn from their failures. Some celebrate failure as a necessary evil. Some model failure as a rite of passage. On one hand, to fail is to admit defeat. On the other hand, we all fail every day. It’s part of being human. In the course of a single day, here are examples of how I failed: Missing a step…

#agile coaching fail

Mega Multiphase Projects Are Alive and Well

It’s true! But, does it have to be? Is there no other way? Apparently not yet. One recent example is the on again, off again Canadian VIA High Speed Rail Line project. Over the past 30 years, it’s been stalled by a combination of political inertia and high costs; always being kicked further and further down the road the road of priorities. The Canadian government announced it’s on…

#agile projectmanagement

Stick To What We Know

In facilitating a recent series of product development workshops with a mixed audience of senior business and technology stakeholders, one of the technology stakeholders made what I felt was a profound statement re. Facilitation: “We don’t understand the product, they don’t understand the process”A Senior Technology Manager As a facilitator, how often do we attempt to understand…

#Agile Facilitation

A Modern Day Story Of The Three Bricklayers

One of my favourite parables that I use to discuss and teach the importance of customer-centricity is “The Three Bricklayers” The parable tells the story of how three bricklayers describe what they’re doing. The first bricklayer says he is simply laying bricks The second bricklayer says he is building a wall The third bricklayer says he is building a cathedral so that people can honour…

#agile parable

Is Agile Really Dead (Again)?

My good friend and colleague, Poonam Gupta invited myself and Joanne Stone to an Agile Meetup at CIBC to kick off 2025. The theme for the meetup was: “Is Agile Truly Dead?” It’s not the first time I’ve heard this question. In fact, rumours of its death started as far back as 2014 when Dave Thomas asserted as much in a blog post, Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility) – over 10 years ago! He…

#Agile Dead? OCM

Dynamic Planning

One of Oxford University Press’ 2024 shortlisted Words of the Year was: “Dynamic Pricing”: (n.) The practice of varying the price for a product or service to reflect changing market conditions; in particular, the charging of a higher price at a time of greater demand. Given the rising and fluctuating cost of living for everything from groceries to concert tickets, I can understand why it was…

#Agile Project Management

Your Agile Is Not My Agile

“The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” That’s a quote from the 2003 movie “Lost in Translation” starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. When I started thinking about this post, the title of that movie came to mind. The problem with Agile is that… How people choose to translate and apply the Agile Manifesto values and principles vary…

#agile

We Dare Not Change

I recently encountered strong senior leadership resistance to changing and improving a poorly written set of Program Features. The product of an expensive workshop facilitated by a top management consulting firm over a year ago, using physical Post-It notes on a whiteboard. Each Post-it note was then digitally transcribed as Program Features into a software development tool. The Program Features…

#agile change management resistance

Not My Monkeys, Not My Circus

The title of this post is one of my wife’s favourite sayings. It’s her justification for not wanting to get pulled into a situation that didn’t concern her. The saying is based on a Polish proverb that actually states it the other way around, “Not my circus, not my monkeys” I prefer my wife’s version. “Not my monkeys, not my circus” Leading with the monkeys 🐒 reminds me of a 1974 Harvard…

#agile timemanagement

Surprise! Your Scrum Team Is Not Perfect

How often have you started with a perfectly formed Scrum team? Dedicated? Stable? Small? Cross-functional? Self-managing? If you’re lucky, this is a non-issue; if you’re not, what can you do to arrive there? I’ve witnessed two basic options: Complain, moan and bitch. Get over it and get on with it. In Pareto fashion, based on my personal experience, approximately 80% of the time, people…

#agile scrum team

Burndown: What Good Looks Like

When I look at the sprint burndown chart for some Scrum teams, I see a shape that resembles a hockey stick with shaft held horizontal and toe pointing down. No work completing throughout most of the sprint and then a sudden flurry of completed work items during the last few days of the sprint as the team attempts to burn to zero work remaining. I love my hockey stick but not with agile ways of…

#agile metrics

Lo-Tech Is (Still) King

Digital remote collaboration tools enable human remote work environments. They are indispensable for agile ways of working. They provide a virtual way of fulfilling the Agile Manifesto’s Principle #6: “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation” I used to think “face-to-face” meant it had to be in-the-flesh,…

#lo-tech agile

Big Batch Big Bamg

One of my most memorable music videos from the 80s is Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” recorded in 1986. The song tells the story of a person who has had enough of a small town where people think small and use small words. So, he leaves to make his way to the big, big city to make it big. A place where he can stretch his mouth to let big words come right out. For me, the song is a metaphor for…

#agile ways small ways

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