2017 Scrum Coaching Retreat in Kiev is in the books!!! The event has brought together a few dozens of agile coaches and trainers from nearby and far away. The participants came from different backgrounds and focus areas but due to everyone’s extensive experience in self-organization and self-management, got the show on the road very quickly. After … Read more
What is the best Sprint length? Who decides on Sprint length? Are there any exceptions? What are some of the most common mistakes people make, when making decisions about Sprint length? Let’s start from grassroots and answer the following basic question: “What is Sprint main goal?” And while looking for an answer, let’s refer to … Read more
As per Scrum Guide, “…Scrum is a framework for developing and sustaining complex products… It [Scrum] is lightweight, easy to understand and difficult to master”. The guide talks about basic Scrum, or Scrum by one cross-functional team that works for only one Product Owner, on one single product. The guide also mentions situations when multiple … Read more
Virtual networks of professional agile coaches and trainers is good place to pick up some most thoughtful and provocative agile discussions. The most reputable networks that I know of, and happen to belong to, are the communities of: Certified Enterprise Coaches and Certified Scrum Trainers (both, from Scrum Alliance), and Candidate Large Scale Scrum Trainers … Read more
Frequently, HR topics find their way into Agile Communities and almost always become heated discussions. Recently, and again, one of such topics was raised in the global community of Coaches and Trainers. Truth be told, HR norms and policies are a direct reflection of organizational culture (also, corollary to structure) and very much define human … Read more
On 23-24th of February, there was the first ever 2017 – Business Agility Conference, held in NYC. The event could be best described as “…2 days of authentic short stories and facilitated deep dives on business agility; focus on organizational design, market disruption and product innovation, agile outside IT and next-generation leadership…” (quoted from https://businessagility2017.com/) The uniqueness of this event was due its demographics, and in particular: due … Read more
Not all types of product development are the same. The most three distinct types are: Internal Product development, where Users/Customers are internal Product Owner is internal, playing the role of a conduit between Users and Technology Dev/Technology/IT is internal, mainly dealing with Product Owner (and her team) Outsourced Product (“Project”) development, where Users/Customers are internal … Read more
December 19-21. This week, there was a mind-blowing 3-day experience of system thinking and organizational design modeling with Craig Larman. Having been at wide array of Craig’s training and public presentations in the past, I was still overwhelmed with volume of education that this class offered. One of the main distinctions ( imo – improvements) of … Read more
This was an amazing two and a half-day working session, with participation of organizational leaders and enterprise coaches coming together from different parts of the world: Sweden, Costa Rica and USA. One of the co-creators of Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) course – Pete Behrens took the mixed group, consisting of managers and coaches through a very engaging training … Read more
Scrum Team. It is a cross-functional group of developers that are able to deliver complete business functionality (“from concept to cash”) to customers in a short time-frame. The easiest way to make sure that a team is cross-functional is to compose it of developers that are initially multi-skilled and possess both, primary and secondary skills. … Read more
