The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

What Cinco de Mayo Can Teach Us About Agile - Mike Cohn Today seems like a good day to celebrate Cinco de Agile. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Battle of Puebla, when a smaller, less-equipped Mexican force defeated a larger French army. There’s an agile lesson in that. The side with the bigger plan, more resources, and more confidence doesn’t always win. Sometimes the winner is the side that can a...

The Hole in Your Product Team That Keeps Swallowing Users A new employee engagement platform launched its pilot with a perfect customer. Warm relationship at the CEO level. Company-wide mandate. Strong early results from the users who engaged. One problem: most of the company never touched it. Despite the mandate. Despite the results sitting right there in the data. How to connect with AgileDad: -...

What Servant Leadership Actually Means When I first heard the term “servant leader,” I pictured someone endlessly helpful. Always available. Always saying yes. Smoothing every edge, softening every message, making sure nobody was ever uncomfortable. I was wrong. And for a while, that misunderstanding made me a less effective Scrum Master. Here’s the truth I had to learn the hard way:  Servant lead...

Be Quick NOT To Judge Are we quick to form opinions about others? We should not be... 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/

AI Breaks the Agile Sweet Spot For Team Size How big should your Agile taem be? Does Agentic AI change everything? Lets listen and explore how team sizes may EXPLODE! 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/leehenso...

A Plan is Not a Commitment - Mike Cohn One of the fastest ways leaders create overcommitment is by treating a plan like a guarantee. An agile team builds its plan from what it knows at the time: assumptions, estimates, priorities, and constraints. That means every plan is probabilistic. It has some chance of coming true, but that chance is not 100%. That is why I coach teams to aim for about 80% s...

Your Retrospective Never Actually Fixes the Alignment Problem The retrospective is one of the most protected ceremonies in agile. Scrum teams hold it every sprint. SAFe bakes it into every iteration. Coaches run workshops on how to run better ones. And yet, the same misalignment issues resurface sprint after sprint. This isn’t a facilitation problem. It isn’t a psychological safety problem. It is...

Memorial Day Special Episode By late morning, the small town square was already filling with folding chairs, fluttering flags, and families dressed in red, white, and blue. The air smelled faintly of fresh grass and hot pavement, and the sound of a high school band warming up drifted across the park like a promise. People did not speak loudly. They smiled, hugged one another, and found their place...

Losing Yourself In The Service of Others How do you serve others? 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/

What Does a Delivery Manager Do and Do I Even Need One? A Delivery Manager is a client-facing,  Agile  project manager who acts as a servant-leader to ensure high-quality products are delivered in a predictable way. As the main point of contact between founders and Developers, the Delivery Manager keeps everyone connected and informed. They own the plan, align the product strategy and scope with f...

When The Work Wont Fit, Make It a Shared Problem - Mike Cohn When a team says, “We can’t do all of that by then,” many leaders make the same mistake:  They push harder. They restate the deadline. They repeat the importance. They ask for more effort, more creativity, or more commitment. But once the team has told you the work will not fit, pressure is usually the wrong next move. Your job at that p...

The 5 Whys and What We are Missing Most managers are excellent problem solvers. The problem is they’re solving the presenting problem, the one on the surface, not the real one underneath. And that’s exactly why the same situations keep triggering the same reactions, the same frustration, the same exhaustion. The Five Whys technique was originally developed in manufacturing to trace defects back to...

Adjusting the Leadership Lens A senior leader said something to me recently that stayed. “My role has grown faster than the way I think about decisions.” It wasn’t a lack of capability orambition. It was the quieter realisation that leadership scale demands a different lens. In my work with leaders stepping into broader organisational roles, I often hear this moment. One leader described it this w...

The ART of Communication - How to Be Better Engaged Are you a great communicator? Listen today and find out! 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/

Project World | Business Analyst World - Day 3-4 Review Day 3 - Agile Fundamentals - One of the most common points of Agile adoption failure comes with the incremental on-boarding of Agile teams throughout an organization while not having everyone starting with the same foundational Agile knowledge. This workshop session is designed to help everyone on the team learn the fundamental principles beh...

Project World | Business Analyst World - Day 2 Review Beyond Delivery - Project success is too often measured at delivery. On time, on scope, on budget, yet real value is frequently lost after the work is “done.” In today’s evolving project and product environments, leaders are being asked to think beyond execution and focus on outcomes, adoption, and lasting impact. This session reframes project...

Project World | Business Analyst World - Day 1 Review Day 1 was ABSOLUTELY amazing! The conference in Toronto proved not to disappoint. I did my session on day 1 about Shake your BA! Today, Tuesday, I am going to present my WAgile presentation! This is the BEST conference ever! How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_co...

Shake Your BA... The Importance of Understanding the POBAFATA Day 1 of the PMBA Toronto Conference! I am certain it will be AMAZING! What does a BA do and why are they the most important part of the POBAFATA. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook]  ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linked...

Agile Works With People Who Don’t Actually Need Agile In a disciplinary society, authority structures dominate. People follow rules, and work is organized through hierarchy and control. Factories, bureaucracies, and military systems are classic examples. In the achievement society the logic changes. And people are no longer told  “You must.”  Instead they are told  “You can.” And this message soun...

Let’s play a quick round of  Two Truths and a Lie . Here are three statements about agile. Two are true. One is false. Read them over and see if you can spot the lie before I reveal it.   Agile teams should be willing to change their plan for the sprint if they discover a better way to meet the sprint goal. Estimation in agile is most useful for helping teams forecast and make trade-offs, not for...

Feliz Cinco de Mayo! On a warm May morning, a young boy named Mateo stood at the edge of a dusty field in Cinco de Mayo celebration. Music filled the air, families gathered, and bright colors danced in the wind, but Mateo felt small. He watched others perform traditional dances, speak proudly of their heritage, and laugh with confidence. Mateo, however, carried quiet doubts. His family had struggl...

You Have a Vision For Your Team - Agile Leadership Gap What is the Agile Leadership Gap? 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/

The Beauty of Positive Networking Sometimes we just need to be with people. Other times we can be all peopled out. 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/

Project Summit Business Analyst World 2026 - Orlando Day3 I got to ROCK the Leadership workshop for the first time and it got RAVE Reviews! WooHoo! 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/

Project Summit Business Analyst World 2026 - Orlando Day 2 Here is a summary of Day 2 of the conference.