There are many approaches to carrying out planning. Here's what I use for situations that require any kind of planning at all - from working across organisational transformation to figuring out what to do at the weekend. I like it because it’s simple, easy to remember and it sets me up naturally to... continue reading

Empathy is a good thing and understanding what your colleagues actually do can be a very useful boost to collaboration. When we work in cross-functional teams or with people from other parts of the organisation it is helpful to get an understanding of what they do, how they can contribute and what w... continue reading

In Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash Mary and Tom Poppendieck categorised waste encountered in software development into: Partially Done Work Is work going from beginning to end in a single rapid flow? For example; are you building up large amounts of untested or undeploye... continue reading

I often teach Agile to people who have nothing to do with software development, such as leadership teams or organisations that operate entirely outside of the digital world. In this context I only teach the Modern Agile values (read more about the modern agile movement at modernagile.org). I always... continue reading

Understanding ‘why’ you do agile is important, and the agile manifesto is one of the first things we cover on any Agile Professional Foundation course. I have, however, found the wordiness of some of the principles a little daunting and let’s face it the website does look a bit like my Nan’s wallpap... continue reading

Role Expectation Mapping is a process described by the awesome Jimmy Janlén designed to aid collaboration and help a team work through mismatches in understanding of each other’s roles. I came across Jimmy's article recently when working with a small team who were struggling with what they could and... continue reading

The retrospective ended with two team members storming out of the room in opposite directions, two others toe-to-toe in heated dispute and Leah, the Product Owner handing out orders to whoever would listen. I started to realise how stuck this team actually was... Over the few previous days I’d witne... continue reading

This post was originally published in Methods & Tools magazine as Breaking Bad: The cult of not giving bad news. I have updated it since then and re-published here as I have collected more learnings since then. It stemmed from something I kept observing, which really bothered me; why is it so ha... continue reading

How you kick-off a team is important! In fact it’s so important, that when you get it right your team can perform up to 30% better. That's what research by J. Richard Hackman tells us and it’s certainly consistent with my own observations. What exactly is a kick-off? A kick-off is a series of meetin... continue reading

One of the most useful tools when introducing Agile into an organisation is personal Kanban. It gives me unique insights into an organisation's culture and values, and helps me determine my next steps. As an Agile coach, the process of getting people into personal Kanban facilitates insights into ho... continue reading

I was asked to facilitate a session with a team of systems analysts who wanted to set their objectives for the next 6 months. This was a group of people who spent a large portion of their time embedded within project delivery teams. I wanted to use an approach that could address a number of question... continue reading

Are you tired of capturing ideas and experiments that come out of your retrospectives only to forget about them after a couple of days? Do your improvement ideas get lost in waves of sticky-notes and hand drawn diagrams? Try idea balloons! Idea balloons are a way of keeping your ideas and agreements... continue reading

Recently, someone from the small but perfectly shaped nation of Iceland asked me the following question: “When watching your InfoQ talk on portfolio Kanban I noticed that you talked about measuring autonomy, mastery, and purpose as they are defined by Daniel Pink. I have been searching the web for a... continue reading

Even with high performing teams sometimes there are common themes coming up again and again in each retrospective. Much like a tight spot in a muscle that keeps lingering around (until we get a good massage) those issues keep coming back until we pay them enough attention to make them disappear. Use... continue reading