Part of the reason we like Path to Agility is the simplicity of knowing how your Agile Transformation is doing. Let’s take a look at a recent example from a company we are working with. The team leaders and mid-management at this company self-assessed that they were more than halfway through their Agile journey –...
Author: Scott Dunn (Scott Dunn)
The Most Important Thing Leadership Needs – Feedback
Recently a senior agile coach shared that what was most needed was for leaders to have someone give them feedback on how disruptive and costly their behavior was to Scrum teams. When leaders would bypass the Product Owner and go straight to teams and change priorities and assign work, it caused many problems, most of...
Your Estimates are Bad Because…Pt 1.
Another great interview this week provided an insight I had never heard before. Your estimates are bad, and you’re missing delivery dates because (wait for it….) – they don’t know! Okay, nothing new there. What WAS new was WHY they don’t know and don’t push back on the business pushing for commitments around uncertainty. Here’s...
Double Your Team’s Velocity – Late Changes
What’s the cost of late decisions and changes to product requirements? Twice the effort for the same output. During a recent interview with an Engineering Manager (whom I consider one of the best I’ve worked with), the subject came up with late changes to their release plan. His team, the Product Owner, Tech Lead would...
Fixing the Flaws in the Agile Community
I was just reading a case study of agile and curious about how it became part of a website about a new movement of agile. I was confused because the case study was nothing new, just good old-fashion agile, with some design sprints and leadership support thrown in. After more searching, I found that you,...
COVID-19 and Responding to Change Over Following a Plan
Update – August 2020 Know Someone Impacted by COVID? Speaking of special registration discounts, Rocket Nine has extended the discount code FaceC19Together until the end of 2020 to reduce our online course prices by $199 for individuals who are facing state or company stay-home orders. Feel free to pass the code and links to our classes along...
Build Your Own Conference – The Agile Open Experience
With the San Diego Agile Open just around the corner, it would help to explain the value to those who have never been. Essentially, people volunteer topics that either they will share about or are interested in, and then they pick a time and place for the session. Others interested can initial the topic sheet...
Watch for the Bait and Switch
The company had been burned. We were discussing a proposal with the company’s leadership, when suddenly one of them asked, “Am I talking to the people who will be delivering the training?” The manager called it “bait and switch…” “WindmillsPlantation-TurksAndCaicos-pic03” by KimCarpenter NJ is licensed under CC BY 2.0 When we asked why they asked...
What’s New in SAFe 5.0
What are the most striking changes among the dozen changes in SAFe 5.0? The new areas of Continuous Learning Culture, Design Thinking and Customer Centricity are the most significant to me. For years, agile coaches have championed companies becoming learning organizations, and certainly, Scrum has enabled that via the Sprint Review and Retrospective’s inspect and...