Motivation 3.0 Is Required to Transition from Tribe Stage 3 to Tribe Stage 4

In his book Drive, Daniel Pink says that when it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators — which don’t work and often do more harm than good. We need a system upgrade. And the science shows … Read more

Scrum and Kanban at the Enterprise and Team Levels

Scrum, as the most structured of all Agile frameworks, is a great way to ensure predictable, strategically planned, incremental product delivery. Scrum ensures good responsiveness to frequently changing market demands. Although nonprescriptive, Scrum clearly defines certain roles, responsibilities, and ceremonies. Kanban, for the most part, is silent about certain aspects that Scrum suggests explicitly (e.g., … Read more

Handling Interruptions in Scrum: 4 Options (Part 2)

Author: Gene Gendel There are four commonly known ways that teams use to handle production support, or other “interrupt” items. Frequently, these items are classified by “levels” of priority/criticality, with L1 being the lowest and L3 being the highest priority. As we continue from Part 1 of this two-part article, we look at the remaining … Read more

Handling Interruptions in Scrum: 4 Options (Part 1)

Author: Gene Gendel In an ideal world, a cross-functional Scrum team must be fully focused on Scrum. The team is also expected to hear a voice of one customer only: the product owner. But what happens when reality intervenes and you get pulled in other directions? In this two-part article I will: Highlight common interrupt … Read more

Epic-Level Estimation

Author: Gene Gendel Imagine: You are about to form a new feature team that is composed of bright, cross-functional experts, self-motivated and self-managed. They all worked in Scrum settings before and are fully supportive of Agile principles. The organization they work for is properly structured and it nicely supports the adoption of Agile/Kaizen culture. Imagine … Read more

Reviews, Appraisals and Incentives

Author: Gene Gendel I wanted to start this discussion with Wikipedia definition of Performance Appraisal: “A performance appraisal (PA), also referred to as a performance review, performance evaluation,[1] (career) development discussion,[2] or employee appraisal[3] is a method by which the job performance of an employee is documented and evaluated. Performance appraisals are a part of … Read more

Feb 1-3, 2016. Certified LeSS Practitioner in New York

Author: Gene Gendel Event Details  Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) is a framework for scaling agile development to multiple teams. LeSS builds on top of the Scrum principles such as empiricism, cross-functional, self-managing teams and provides a framework for applying that at scale. It provides simple structural rules and guidelines on how to adopt Scrum in large product development. The … Read more

Fallacies of RAG Reports

Author: Gene Gendel How Much Can You Trust Your Navigation Instruments? 1944…Imagine you are flying back home from a risky military mission…If you are not able to vividly imagine what this experience is like, please follow this link:  https://www.keystepstosuccess.com/2016/01/b-17e-bomber-tight-coupling-of-color-coding-with-numerical-data/ RAG System in Conventional Project Management Today, the RAG system is still widely used in conventional project … Read more