The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

If Your ScrumMaster Only Runs Meetings... You're Wasting Your Best Leader Ask ten people what a ScrumMaster does, and you're likely to hear ten different answers. "They run the Daily Stand-up." "They schedule Sprint Planning." "They update Jira." "They remove impediments." "They're the Agile coach." "They're the team's proj...

AI Can Write User Stories... So What Does the Product Owner Do Now? If artificial intelligence can write user stories... What exactly is the Product Owner supposed to do? It's a fair question. Over the past year, we've watched AI tools generate acceptance criteria, organize backlogs, summarize stakeholder interviews, identify duplicate requirements, estimate effort, draft release notes, an...

WAgile Isn't a Compromise... It's the Future of Modern Project Delivery "If Agile works so well... why are so many organizations mixing it with traditional project management?" For years, the conversation has been framed as a battle. Agile versus Waterfall. Scrum versus Project Management. Innovation versus governance. Speed versus predictability. Choose a side. Defend your metho...

Freedom, Fireworks, and the Power of Together Today is one of those days that brings out something special in all of us. The flags come out. The grills get fired up. The music gets louder. The kids run around with sparklers. And for a moment, we all slow down long enough to remember what this day is really about. Yes, it is about fireworks. Yes, it is about food, fun, and family. But more than any...

Bad Agile Is Dying... And That's the Best News Agile Has Had in Years Agile isn't dying. Bad Agile is. And honestly... that's fantastic news. For nearly two decades, organizations around the world raced to become "Agile." Some invested heavily in coaching. Others purchased new software. Many reorganized entire departments. Unfortunately, somewhere along the journey, a surpris...

AI Won't Replace ScrumMasters... Or Will It? Will artificial intelligence replace the ScrumMaster? It's a headline that keeps resurfacing. Social media is full of bold predictions. Industry blogs continue debating it. Conference sessions are packed with people looking for answers. And if you've spent any time on LinkedIn recently, you've probably seen more than a few posts claiming...

Thinking Leader vs Talking Leader Many leaders confuse constant talking with teams as real progress, but having discussions is not real progress, nor clear thinking. The reality is that leadership runs on two types of work: Thinking and talking. - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [facebook]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.faceb...

Agile Estimation and Story Points Story points are a way of estimating the effort required to complete a user story or any other piece of work in agile software development. A user story is a short description of a feature or functionality that the customer wants from the product. - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -...

The Three Rules Join us for this episode where you learn the three most important rules to bring you love light and happiness in your personal and professional life. - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [facebook]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [Linkedin]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeh...

The Return of In-Person Private Training The return of AgileDad's private in-person training reflects a growing realization that while virtual learning is excellent for knowledge transfer, face-to-face experiences remain one of the most effective ways to build trust, strengthen collaboration, and create lasting organizational change. - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instag...

WAgile - Is Hybrid Project Management Finally Real? WAgile is a hybrid project management approach that uses traditional governance and planning to establish direction while using Agile practices to continuously adapt execution based on learning and feedback. - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [facebook]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠htt...

AgileDad & AI For Product Managers, Project Managers, and Leadership The real value of AI is not just that it helps us move faster. It is that it helps us slow down in the right places so we can move better in the places that matter most. That is the shift. AI should not just help us produce more. It should help us think more clearly before we produce anything at all. - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https:/...

AgileDad and Agile Leadership Agile is not a magic word. It is not a sticker you put on a broken system and suddenly expect better outcomes. Agile leadership training should do one thing above all else: help leaders create real change that people can feel in the work, in the culture, and in the results. - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/...

Finding Your Happy Place and What That Means To You Do you have a happy place? What sparks great joy for you? - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [facebook]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [Linkedin]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

The Difference Between Leading & Facilitating Leadership often asks you to do two hard things at once: move the organization forward  and  lead in a collaborative way. On their own, each of these roles is challenging. Together, they can create a tension that strains your ability to be effective at either. It has nothing to do with you personally and everything to do with the fact that decision...

5 Hidden Costs of Sprint Planning And the Agile Approach That Actually Works Hidden cost 1 — Meeting time multiplied by shallow decisions Hidden cost 2 - Inflated estimates driven by groupthinkHidden cost 3 — Hidden work and untracked dependenciesHidden cost 4 — The false economy of large batch planningHidden cost 5 — Overcommitment as a culture problem - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠...

Agile is Dead. Welcome to the Era of “Agent-Driven” Development Agile was invented for humans — biological entities that need coffee, sleep, and two weeks to understand a complex requirement. But we are no longer just building software with humans. We are building it with  agents . Agents that don’t sleep, don’t need standups, and can iterate in seconds, not days. Welcome to Agent-Driven Developme...

Simplicity in Agile: The Art of Maximizing Work Not Done Simplicity is preached in Agile, yet somehow, we are tangled up in complex system processes and frameworks. And if you’ve worked with Agile at scale, you’ve probably seen it: what started as a powerful mechanism for flexibility and speed now seems more like a convoluted system of frameworks, metrics, and reports, ironically complicating the...

Levity, Trolling, and Balance Do you have the correct balance in your life? Can you work and have fun all at the same time? - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [facebook]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [Linkedin]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Jira Turned Agile Into a Micromanagement Tool There was a time when Agile felt liberating. Teams owned their work, conversations mattered more than documentation, and progress was measured by outcomes, not activity. Then somewhere along the way, tools stepped in to “support” the process. What followed in many organizations was not support but substitution. Jira did not break Agile by design. It be...

The Cost of Rework No One Talks About Here’s a number that stopped me cold when I first saw it: 30 to 50 percent of all effort on software projects is spent on rework. Not building. Not shipping. Redoing work that was already done. That stat comes from software measurement research that’s been replicated across multiple studies — and yet somehow, it doesn’t come up in sprint planning, or project r...

AI Didn’t Speed Up My Discovery There is a thing that happens in domain conversations. We talk about something, agree we understand it, and proceed. Then I show a sketch and the client says, “No, that is not what I meant.” The talking did not catch the gap. The visual did. AI lets me put a draft visual in front of a power user in the time it takes to have a conversation about it. Half-formed. Some...

Psychology of High-Performing Teams The most critical psychological factor in team performance is psychological safety. This concept describes a shared belief held by members of a team that the group is a safe place for interpersonal risk-taking. In environments with high psychological safety, team members feel confident that they will not be embarrassed, rejected, or punished for speaking up with...

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood We all have a LOT to learn from Fred Rogers! His kindness and willingness to serve has not gone unnoticed! How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [facebook]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠⁠⁠⁠ - [Linkedin]  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Traditional Product Management Is Ending in 2026 For years, product management followed a familiar playbook. Gather requirements. Write PRDs. Prioritise backlog. Run sprint rituals. Coordinate across teams. Ship features. That model worked in a world where building software was slow, expensive, and engineering bandwidth was the biggest constraint. But in 2026, that world is changing fast. AI is re...