Two kinds of teams, who couldn’t be working more differently. They differ in their structure, how they work together, and how they communicate and share information. I do think that only one strives in an Agile environment and that organisations who want to hold on to the other will face difficulties. Here’s a description of these two kinds of teams.
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The current female quota for all ticket holders for the Agile Coach Camp 2019 Melbourne, Australia, is 42%. We achieved that by selling exclusively 40% of all tickets to people who identify themselves as female. Here’s how we did that with the help of Stephen Colbert.
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Retrospectives – a waste of time in meetings? Too much investment of time with too little valuable outcome? A little thought experiment shows clearly that it’s worth investing in retrospectives. Continue reading
In this post, I’ll clarify the intent behind the Sprint Review. It’s not about applause or reports. It’s a feedback gathering event which has to be properly prepared. Here are 17 questions and 8 techniques on the what and how to ask for feedback in product development. Continue reading
Dear Lean Kanban Aficionado,
With any luck there’s a conference coming up later this year: Lean Kanban Australia/New Zealand, or LKANZ if you like, (pronounced el-cance, rimes with bell dance). It’s the southern hemisphere extension of the famous Lean Kanban conference series. This year the series consists of 10 conferences, well, 9 actually, and we want to make the 10th happen in Melbourne, Australia, on 12th-13th September – with crowdfunding. We need you for this, so please read on! Continue reading
Scrum Australia 2013 in Sydney was my first Agile conference in Australia. And what a good event it was! Here are a few things I liked:
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Assume a perfect Scrum implementation. All artefacts, all meetings, all roles, and all rules are in place. If you were changing only one of the essential elements of Scrum, would you still call the remainder Scrum? Continue reading
Whenever I give an overview of Agile, e.g., in classes or to clients, I use an onion to describe it. My Agile Onion consists of a core, has two layers, and it rests in a bottling jar. The Agile Onion represents the Agile Developer Skills, Scrum, Kanban and Agile Management Innovations. For me, the Agile Onion represents the 4 fundamental aspects of the Agile universe out there. Continue reading
A few decades ago, writer and poet Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
In my opinion it’s not actions what people are looking for, but inspiration. That’s what I like about Stoos Connect: it inspires people all over the world to yearn for new management ideas.
Therefore we came up with the term Agile Management Innovations, or short AMI (which sounds like the name Amy, like Amy Winehouse or Amy Farrah Fowler, which means “The beloved one”, which I find kinda nice). Continue reading
Once there was this day when I almost attacked a manager with hot coffee. I had booth duty at a conference in 2009, and a manager came by and asked about Kanban. I grabbed my coffee mug and explained Kanban by refering to the practices, like “Visualize” and “Limit WIP”, and to the principles, like “Start with what you know”, etc. As I explained, the manager’s face went from sceptical over interested to pleased – actually it was more like an evil grin. So I asked him what he thinks about it, and he said: “This is awesome! That’s exactly the kind of method I was looking for to finally get more control over my lazy employees!” Continue reading
