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How to Know Whether Your Team is Only a Workgroup

All too often in organizations, a team is not actually a team, but a workgroup. Even if it’s cross-functional, folks attend meetings together, and they work off a single plan.READ MORE

Agility Takes More than Practices

Your organization has an Agile way of working. Your previous company probably did too, but theirs was different. And the popular Agile frameworks? They don’t all agree either.

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A Simple Technique for Better Decisions

When I started in software development, projects went ahead with high certainty: we made big plans and then executed on them. That didn’t always turn out well.READ MORE

Effective Senior Management: a One-Minute Summary

A CEO asked me: “I can see how the teams and the product lines will operate with an Agile mindset, but at my level, how do I manage differently? How do I work with the other executives?”

Here is my quick (“elevator pitch”) summary:

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Do you have Waterfall in Agile clothing?

And… how would you tell? Here is a story from Gil.
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Practice Does not Make Perfect: Why Agile Transformations Fail (50-min video)

Almost every organization is now showing interest in Agile. We seem to have all the ingredients for effective transformations: well-known practices, detailed processes, ever-improving tools, extensive literature, myriad certifications, and many consultants. How is it, then, that so few organizations are truly agile?READ MORE

Does Your Daily Standup Matter?

Try this sometime:

Survey your team members anonymously: “What’s the purpose of our daily standup?” (or daily Scrum, whatever you call it).

You might be surprised by the number of materially different answers you’ll get.

And then, you should be concerned over how many of those answers include words such as “updates” or “status.”

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Being Agile Without Fitting a Mould

A few weeks ago I started helping out at one of the most Agile tech companies I’ve ever seen.

I looked into their current state. On the surface, they use a mix of Scrum and Kanban ideas that wouldn’t pass muster by the standards of either approach. Some practices are done loosely, while others are absent.

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The Making of a Great Agile Management Team (27-min audio interview)

How does a group of managers truly become a management team, especially one that builds an Agile culture? READ MORE

How to Become Agile Outside of Software?

At a technology company, the CEO called the VP Sales in and say, “I want Sales to be more like the tech team.”

Wait, what? Technology teams as the model of behavior?

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