The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

Maximizing Stakeholder Buy-in The most amazing product strategy and product roadmap are ineffective if the stakeholders don’t support them. Without their buy-in, you’ll struggle to execute the strategy and find it hard to deliver the roadmap. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This article shares my tips to help you secure strong stakeholder buy-in to strategic product decisions, align people, an...

How Much Control Do We Need? Do you ever wonder what the correct threshold for being in control is? Is there ever a time where it is better to NOT have control? Join V. Lee Henson as we explore what control is and when it is healthy. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook]  https://www.facebook.com/Real...

How Your Agile Team Could Compete In The Olympics - Mike Cohn Let the games begin! Are you and your team ready for the Olympics? I hope so, since the games start tomorrow. I want to share a few Olympic events at which I think agile teams would excel. First are the speed events: swimming, sprint canoeing, the marathon, and the shorter running events. The emphasis agile teams place on going faster a...

Ditch the Crystal Ball: A Simple Way to Prioritize Your Team’s Work - Justin Hawkins We have over 200 ideas in our backlog across our suite of applications. Each of those ideas represents anywhere from 3 days to 3 months of work for our product and development teams to fully define, build, and release. All said and done, we could keep our teams busy for  5 years  with only the things we already kn...

ScrumMasters NEED to Rethink Their Role or Become Extinct... 1) Help the team learn to self-organize in different ways 2) Listen for impediments out of the teams control and work quickly to get those removed 3) Anticipate problems and help the team avoid them. 4) Become equipped to radiate information about the teams work. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [ins...

Strategy To LAND Your Next Product Manager Role How can you find your next job in this economy? It is actually MUCH easier than you imagine! Join V. Lee Henson as he explores what you need to do TODAY to land that ideal role. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook]  https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad...

The Untold Story Behind The Key Bridge Collapse in Baltimore 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/

T-Shaped Personas Key Concepts A  persona  is an abstract representation of a typical user or customer. We often focus on the  buyer persona  and the moments-that-matter for our  buyer’s journey . This article focuses on the  customer  already using our product or service. A  feature  is an important part, quality or ability of a  product  that makes it distinct or better; it usually contributes t...

Stop Doing So Many Spikes - Mike Cohn One of the more common mistakes I see teams make is relying too much on spikes. A spike is an activity a team performs to get smarter about something. With a spike, a team isn’t trying to immediately deliver a new capability; instead, they are building the knowledge that will allow them to deliver the new capability later. Spikes are a great tool, and I’d expe...

6 Micro-Habits of Highly Effective Leaders Great managers follow simple habits and practices to stay highly effective. They reframe fear as a sign to evaluate multiple options, ask questions, or reconsider assumptions instead of letting fear get in the way of making decisions or taking action. Instead of giving power to naysayers by allowing them to influence their thinking or how they make decisi...

The BEST way to Improve Company Culture Is To KILL It First... You’re working long hours, for low pay, either in an open office environment that nobody likes or working remotely and feeling like you’re going to wake up tomorrow to one of those dreaded HR meeting invites. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of work-life balance anymore, because the gap between the two has disintegrated, and life is s...

The Art of Getting a Good Nights Sleep Is it really possible to get a good nights sleep? Join V. Lee Henson as he reveals tips and tricks to help you get the rest that you need. 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/leeh...

The 9 Zones of A Product Backlog Ideally, I have some work placed in all nine zones. This indicates that product development is progressing, while still being able to develop the product strategy and make it operational. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook]  https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [...

The 5 Deadliest Strategy Myths 1)   A List of Initiatives is a Strategy 2)   You can Prove that your Strategy is Correct 3)   Analytically Strong People are Better Strategists 4)   Strategy is a Zero-Sum Game 5)   Strategy is Formulated at the Top & then Executed Below How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [...

Why Is Strategy So Hard To Define? If you’re a reflective type and you’ve ever considered how difficult it is to truly define strategy, you’re not alone. And I blame the abusers of the term. Those who use it with wild abandon, who insert it in pedestrian comms, repeatedly and deliberately. People who believe that activity becomes  strategic , simply by labelling it so. It is those offenders that m...

What to Do Before Adding Items to the Backlog - Mike Cohn Have you seen “The Princess Bride” movie? I love it. (And the book is even better.) The film tells the love story of Buttercup and Westley. Westley works on Buttercup’s family’s farm and any time she asks him to do something, he responds, “As you wish.” This is *not* how a team should respond when a product owner asks a team to do something...

Top 6 Lessons You Can Learn ONLY If You Step Outside of Your Comfort Zone The comfort zone. What a beautiful place to be in. But have you ever stepped out of your comfort zone? Have you ever thought of venturing outside to see what lies in the great beyond? Have you ever wondered what lessons about life you can learn outside your comfort zone? One thing’s for sure: you’ll be surprised by what you...

The Future of Agile Coaching Agile delivery has conquered the world. Agile is everywhere. The industry dinosaurs have introduced Agile over the years. Public organizations have Scrum teams. It’s omnipresent. Many active in the Agile space have discussed we have reached a saturation point. “Everyone” is doing it, so we should expect a decline in demand to introduce people to Agile. That doesn’t mea...

5 Things I Wish I Would Have Known About Agile Sooner!! When I started as a Scrum Master/Agile coach, I didn’t take a mentor but studied by myself, leading consecutive failures of Agile transformation in projects. It was a hard, shameful, and embarrassing experience, as I even got fired from several projects. However, these experiences made me stronger as well. I decided to take advantage of these...

Should Product Managers Write Problem Statements? - YES! A problem statement is a concise description of an issue to be addressed or a condition to be improved upon. It identifies the gap between the current (problem) state and desired (goal) state of a process or product. The first condition of solving a problem is understanding the problem, which can be done by way of a problem statement. A good...

Corporate Ozempic - Is AI Shrinking Companies? If you want to understand how AI is reshaping business, picture it as the  other  massive innovation of our time: GLP-1 drugs. Both shed weight by suppressing cravings; both exacerbate existing inequities (aka the rich get richer) before generating wider prosperity; and both are having a greater impact than projected as early adopters are hesitant to...

8 Things That Emotionally Intelligent People NEVER Do! THEIR EMOTIONAL BASE IS NOT EXTERNAL THEY MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT HAPPINESS OR WHAT CREATES IT THEY UNDERSTAND THAT FEAR IS A NORMAL EMOTION TO NEW THINGS THEY UNDERSTAND THAT AN EMOTIONS ARE REACTIONS, NOT REALITY THEY DON’T ASSUME THAT A BAD FEELING LEADS TO A BAD LIFE THEY DON’T BEFRIEND EASILY THEY DON’T ASSOCIATE COMPOSURE WITH EMOTIONA...

Independence Day - 4th of July Tribute Join V. Lee Henson as we pay tribute to Independence Day. 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/

Stop Doing Scrum All Wrong... Are you finding that Scrum isn’t working for you? Do you constantly find that you’re never quite able to complete your Sprint Backlog and even when you get close it never really feels like success? You’re more of a feature factory than anything else. Well it’s almost certainly because of this one thing. What is it? Let’s find out! I’ve been using Scrum with teams and...

Is AI Anxiety Holding Us Back? Fear Not.. AI is AMAZING! ChatGPT’s arrival was met with a mix of awe at its technological advancement, and anger at the blazé nature of its launch. Some felt there had been little consideration for how under-prepared society was for this innovation. Students would cheat on essays. Disinformation would spread like wildfire, and it would produce toxic, racist, and sex...