Category: Leadership

Leadership is the Key – Agile 2017 Day 1

It's Agile2017 time again!  Woohoo!.  Everyone from developers and scrum masters and lowly vendors to the "stalwarts" of the agile movement is here.  Over the next week, we will listen to speakers talking about principles, application of agility, tools, systems, and even the new shiny stuff that is all around.  But it tells me something about where we are headed as a "philosophy" when the first keynote speaker, David Marquet, doesn't speak of principles, tools, processes, or practices, but instead speaks of "leadership."

Three Reasons Why You Should Not Hire an Agile Coach

Originally posted on LinkedIn here. I admit it - I am an agile coach. I walk teams through starting up, I work with Product Owners on building backlogs, I work with organizations on agile adoption, I help people and companies get more "awesome." And now I am going to tell you three reasons why you shouldn't hire me, or anyone like me! Now, this doesn't mean every organization should never hire coaches, but over the years I have witnessed scenarios where coaches could not be successful.

Our Customers Don’t Care if We Are Agile

This quote by Steve Jobs, "It Just Works," sums up the long winning streak that Apple had from when Jobs came back to Apple until he unfortunately passed away. During that time Steve and teams delivered innovation after innovation and continued with wins like OS X and iOS from a digital media standpoint, not to mention some underrated killer work like Aperture and Final Cut. But do you know what I never heard? What methodology Apple uses. I also never heard how many people are on each of their teams. And I never heard about their team agreements. Matter-of-fact, all I know is that when I get a product, it just worked; it did what I needed it to do, and if there were bugs they got fixed.

From Manager to Agile Leader

This is a repost of a blog I wrote for MATRIX Resources. See more at: http://www.matrixres.com/resources/blogs/ Dear Coach Josh, Last month our CEO sent out a memo stating that our company was now an Agile company. I know what Agile is, but I don’t know what to do now because I am a manager. I have heard that Agile no longer uses managers and I have been reminded of this by some of my employees after attending a training session. Help! Signed, Scared in Scrum