How To Design An Agile Coaching Alliance
MY COACHING FAILURES Let me share another fruit from my fruitful failure tree... There have been times when I have struggled mightily in my coaching relationships. Whether the relationship is with a person or with a team. The conversations are exhausting, draining for...
Why A Scrum.org Workshop Got Me Into Alcohol
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I am more than 45 years old and I am trying to prove them wrong. Let me explain. SPRING CHICKEN When I was a spring chicken, I wanted to be like all the cool kids. And what the cool kids were doing was drinking alcohol....
10 Steps To Strengthen Your Scrum Fundamentals
Here are some simple steps you can take from the comfort of wherever you might be to strengthen your Scrum Fundamentals. Initial Self-Assessment Read the Scrum Guide and assess where you are right now by taking the Scrum Scrum Open Assessment & Product Owner Open...
10 Questions To Help You Get Your First Break On A Scrum Team
Are you trying to get your first break on a Scrum Team and getting sick and tired of being rejected? Not because you lack the ability but because you lack the experience? Would you like some tips from someone who has trained, coached, and observed thousands of Scrum...
THE PROFESSIONAL SCRUM PRODUCT OWNER: A STARTER JOB DESCRIPTION
THE PRODUCT OWNER (PO) (This definition is based on the November 2020 version of the Scrum Guide, available at - https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html) The Product Owner is a tech-savvy entrepreneur who maximizes the value stakeholders get from the product. No...
10 Questions, 1 Belief and 1 Goal: Navigating the Choppy Waters of Self-Organization
POWERFUL QUESTION Like many trainers, I probably learn more from my students than my students learn from me. When students come hungry to learn, they ask the most thought-provoking questions that take me on treasure hunts that reveal powerful insights. One such...
How 3 Cups of Tea With Marshall Goldsmith Can Enable Self-Organizing Scrum Teams
One of the biggest challenges I have observed in professional adoption of Scrum is that team members (especially me) resist the need to address concerns with other team members 1x1, in a courageous and compassionate way. As human beings, we tend to avoid conflict by...
How Scrum-patible Is Your Mental Model? 10 Statements To Get A Reaction…
MENTAL MODELS "All models are wrong. Some are useful" -George Box The more I try to help individuals and organizations on the path to Professional Scrum, the more I realize that most needless suffering in the name of Scrum is due to a fundamental mis-match of mental...
6 Ways Scrum Can Help You Adapt To Emerging Threats & Opportunities…
Most executives who choose to spend time and money introducing Scrum into their organizations misunderstand it to be a delivery technique that helps you get more work from less people in less time with less money. The most important lesson I learned from Ken Schwaber...
10 Coaching Questions To Enable Self-Organization
As a recovering manager I want to stop solving problems for teams So that I can enable self-organization... One of the biggest reasons I failed my first attempt at the Scrum.org PSM-1 assessment was that I had a habit of solving problems I had no business solving. Ken...