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...

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...

Let them be in control of the way they work ... After having been though a day of letting people self-organise into squads David Mole, Trade Me's head of projects (and my Agile partner in crime) and I are often being asked how we kicked off the new squads and how we make sure they work in a discipli...

“An adequate Scrum Master can handle two or three teams at the time; a great one can only handle one”. (Michael James - An Example Scrum Master’s checklist) I found that organisations, teams and new Scrum Masters (even freshly certified ones) often aren’t sure what the Scrum Master role entails a...

Six months ago SilverStripe, an open-source Content Management System provider and Wellington web agency approached me to help them improve the way in which they deliver client and open source projects, increase employee happiness and, in general, just do the best possible job. To achieve this, we d...

Conducting an interesting and engaging end-of-sprint review is an often overlooked art: Not only do we want to show what we have built during the last sprint and collect feedback and good ideas for what to build next; we also want to give our audience a good experience. At my workplace we always in...