Articles
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
How To Prevent Another Phoenix Pay System Inferno
Design Agencies Are Fun, Development Teams Are Stressful
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 Scrum? In < 3 minutes. Scrum is an idea. The word ‘Scrum’ comes from the game of Rugby: a whole team working together; their…
What Is Kanban?
What Is Kanban? Kanban is a Japanese word that translates into English, roughly, as ‘sign’ or ‘sign board’. When you drive by a motel on…
Someone Made Up ‘SDLC’ And Everyone Went Along With It
What Is ‘SDLC’ SDLC is an acronym that means either Software Delivery Life Cycle or Systems Development Life Cycle. And it is a lie. A…
Sometimes ‘Transparency’ Just Means Not Lying
I am a Professional Kanban Trainer with ProKanban.org
A Story of Release Gates: An Antipattern
Continuous Deployment Is Now Table Stakes
No Longer Tolerate ‘Blocked’ or ‘Waiting’ States
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
Starting with APS (Applying Professional Scrum), a crash-course in iterative & incremental product development with self-organizing teams, a…
Certification Path for Testers
Starting with APS (Applying Professional Scrum), a crash-course in iterative & incremental product development with self-organizing teams, a…
Certification Path for Solutions Architects
What Is a Solutions Architect (SA)? In my experience, Solutions Architect is a job title applied to one of these two roles: A developer…
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
Velocity: Escape this Pitfall!
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 is…