-
How I Use Scrum to Teach Agility
4–6 minutes
As part of my job doing Agile Coaching, I occasionally have to give training to groups of people, and part of that training sometimes requires that I cover the Scrum framework. But because I like coaching people and teams on agility and not frameworks, teaching Scrum is something I’m always conflicted about. But the last time
-
My Agile Sketching Experiment
6–9 minutes
Between September and October of 2022, because the COVID pandemic put my contracts on hold for a few months, I set a personal challenge to create and share 100 agile-related sketches on Twitter. In October 2020, after posting an average of four drawings a day, I completed that challenge. Because I no longer use Twitter,
-
Revisiting the Guidance on Cross-functional Teams
7–11 minutes
Like most things with Agile, the idea that teams should be “cross-functional” gets shared almost like an eternal truth, but it’s an old idea that deserves a deeper look. I will explore different perspectives on cross-functional teams and the Three Amigos model, what benefits they’re supposed to provide, and their gaps. I will also review
-
Miroverse Template: Squad Health Check
4–7 minutes
In March of 2022, my Squad Health Check Miro template got published to the Miroverse. The Squad Health Check, originally developed at Spotify, allows teams to reflect on topics like “Is work fun?” and “Are we learning?” or “Do we have a good sense of our mission?” and more. Making it available as a Miro
-
2021 Schulich MBA Agile Presentation
2–3 minutesIn early 2021 I was asked to give a talk about Agile to an MBA class from the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. I never published the slides online, but now that I’m more actively blogging again, I thought others might benefit from them. This talk included details of a large
-
Making Change Where Change is Possible
4–6 minutesI used to think the best way to go about change was to focus first on the biggest problems hurting a team. The basic premise of this approach was that even though not everything may be perfect, as long as we address the most significant obstacles a team is having, we could live with the
Flow Focused 