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
Blast from the past! On September 29, 2011, I posted the inaugural episode of my “Agile Questions” livestream. For the next 29 weeks, I…
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
Foreword The following article was originally published in 2015 by my friend, colleague, and mentor,…
Team Retrospective — “Feeding the Machine for Corporate Review Season”
Foreword The following article was originally published in 2012 by my friend, colleague, and mentor,…
An Agile Not-for-Profit Organization
Guidelines that Encourage Action If you feel that work needs to be done – it probably does. So, go ahead with it. If you feel responsible…
Certification Path for UX Leads
Certification Path for Testers
Certification Path for Solutions Architects
Certification Path for Scrum Masters
Certifications: “If I Were You…”
Certification & Training Paths for Agile Practitioners
“Can we use Scrum with ‘remote’ staff?”
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…