The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

Project Summit Business Analyst World 2026 - Orlando Day 1 Here is a summary of the conference day 1! 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/

Why Change Management Is Today’s Leadership “No, I don’t want it.” Too bad, because the next  change  is on the way. And you know, it won’t wait for you. You need to wake up and take action.  Arg. Grrr.  You can play a pirate, but there is no way to avoid it. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ...

Why Pressure Backfires Faster Than Leaders Think - Mike Cohn If your team keeps overcommitting, the answer is probably not more pressure. It may be less. Most teams do not need help being optimistic. They already want to believe they can get more done. They want to be helpful. They want to be seen as capable. They want to say yes. So when a leader adds pressure, even subtly, it rarely creates a be...

Earth Day 2026 - The Boy and the Snakes In 1979, after a massive flood hit the region of Assam, a 16-year-old Jadav was walking along the banks of the Brahmaputra River. He came across a sight that broke his heart: hundreds of snakes had been washed up onto a barren, treeless sandbar. With no shade to protect them and no forest to hide in, the snakes had died from the blistering heat. Jadav sat do...

I Was Asked to Fire One-Third of the Company, Here’s What That Taught Me About Leadership and Coaching I still remember the silence in the room. My CEO had just finished speaking. The words were simple, almost clinical:  “We need to reduce headcount by one-third.” No drama. No hesitation. Just a decision. And suddenly, I wasn’t just the Head of HR anymore. I was the person who would carry out one...

The real reasons top performers quit, and what managers can do about it You hired the best people on your team. They deliver results, take initiative, and raise the bar for everyone around them. And then, one day, they hand in their resignation. You run through the usual explanations — better pay, a bigger title, a competitor’s offer. But if you look more carefully, the answer is often closer to h...

Autistic Bowler Achieves Dream With His First Perfect 300 Game And Joins the PBA as a Pro On March 25, an autistic bowler who recently entered the Professional Bowlers Association achieved something he’s been dreaming about for years—his first-ever 300 game. For most casual bowlers, a sanctioned perfect game is rare. For Matt Sipes, it represented so much more than just 12 strikes. It was the resu...

The “Agile” Team That Was Actually Just Doing Waterfall in Sprints Every two weeks, they ran a sprint review. The stakeholders attended. The demos were polished. The velocity charts trended in the right direction. And  nothing significant ever changed  based on what anyone said in that room. That’s not agile. That’s theater with a two-week rhythm. I’ve coached enough product teams to know that the...

Why Estimating and Planning Still Matter - Mike Cohn Over the years, I’ve talked with a lot of teams who’ve been burned by estimating and planning. They’ve seen estimates treated as promises. Plans turned into contracts. Teams punished for being wrong rather than rewarded for learning. Given experiences like those, it’s understandable that many teams conclude the solution is to eliminate estimatin...

The Sprint That Never Delivered Three sprints in a row. Less than half of what the team committed — delivered. As a Scrum Master, that’s the kind of pattern that keeps you up at night. Not because of the numbers themselves, but because of what comes next: the questions from management, the looks in the retrospective, the slow erosion of the team’s belief in themselves. This was Team A. And they we...

Sprint After Sprint After Sprint… When Did This Stop Feeling Like Progress? Here’s a question I want you to sit with for a moment. When you picture a high-performing Agile team — what do you see? Fast delivery? Clean boards? Strong velocity? Stakeholders who are happy and aligned? Now let me ask you a harder question. In that picture —  how does the team feel? Because I’ve been in organizations th...

7 Mindsets of High Performers That Will Change How You Work After years of working closely with teams, leaders, and organizations, one pattern becomes impossible to ignore. High performers aren’t just more talented, luckier, or even working harder than everyone else. They think, approach growth, and respond to pressure differently. And over time, those differences compound into extraordinary resul...

The Unglamorous Truth About Building Trust  I spent my first few months as a Scrum Master chasing the wrong thing. I thought trust was something you  earned  with one big moment. Deliver a miracle sprint. Shield the team from an impossible deadline. Stand up to that one difficult stakeholder in a meeting. I was waiting for my chance to be heroic. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  ⁠https:/...

Not Every Backlog Item Needs Detail - Mike Cohn Here’s something I’ve noticed over the years: Many teams think backlog refinement means making the entire product backlog detailed and “ready.” That’s not how a healthy backlog works. A well-managed product backlog should have a  gradient of clarity . Items near the top of the backlog—the ones you’re likely to work on soon—should be clear and reasona...

Has Scrum Peaked Too Soon? I rarely write about Scrum anymore. Not because I suddenly dislike it, but because my work has gradually moved in a different direction. Still, I sometimes wonder whether Scrum peaked too soon. During the 20 years I worked as a Certified Scrum Trainer at Scrum Alliance, I delivered dozens of training sessions. One thing always stood out to me… The case studies used to ex...

One of the Impacts of Easter in Our Lives Easter is a particular time we set as a celebration of our God of the gospel—Christ dying on the cross for the payment of our sins, God accepting Jesus’ payment by raising Him from the dead, and the Holy Spirit’s transformative work in our lives for righteousness. One of the beautiful impacts of Easter on my life took form as I reflected on a particular in...

The Meaning and Significance of Good Friday Why Good Friday is the Holiest Day of the Year Good Friday stands at the heart of the Christian faith. It is the day when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, suffered and died on the cross for the salvation of humanity. While the name “Good Friday” may seem paradoxical—given that it commemorates Christ’s suffering and death—it is “good” because His sacrifice o...

Which Leadership Pattern Shows Up Under Pressure? - Mike Cohn Every year around April 1st, we like to have a little fun. But as with most good humor, there’s usually a grain of truth underneath it. After working with thousands of teams and leaders over the years, one thing has become very clear: agile rarely succeeds or fails because of a framework. It succeeds or fails because of leadership behav...

The AI TPM Landscape If you search for "AI Technical Program Manager career advice," you'll find two things: job postings and generic reassurance that "your skills transfer." What you won't find is anyone mapping the actual landscape showing which companies expect what, and where your existing experience actually gets you. I've spent the last three years at a cybers...

Scrum Is Dead - Here Is What Killed It! My dear friend Katharine reached out to me and asked me to review and reply to this LinkedIn post. NOW I perfectly understand why! Great job bringing this to my attention. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook]  ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Lin...

That's What Friends Are For What does true friendship look like? Join us for this Friday episode to learn what exactly stands behind true friendship. 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/

Predictability Is My North Star Velocity said “healthy.” The system said “unhealthy.” I chose to trust the system. For six straight Sprints, the velocity chart looked great. Every Sprint, the team hit the number. Every review, the dashboard showed green. And yet… the last couple of Sprints felt bad. Work thrashed. Priorities shifted. Unplanned items kept sneaking in. The team was exhausted, and I...

The Most Underrated Advantage of Short Sprints - Mike Cohn A recent Gallup survey found that 80% of employees who received meaningful feedback in the past week are engaged at work. For comparison, Gallup’s overall engagement numbers are often around 30%. That’s a striking gap. It suggests something many leaders overlook: performance may depend less on changing team structure and more on improving...

Corporate, Business or Functional Strategy? The differences between Corporate Strategy, Business Strategy, and Functional Strategy lie primarily in their scope, time horizon, and focus. These three levels form a hierarchy that ensures all parts of a diversified organization are aligned, moving from the broad, long-term vision down to specific, day-to-day actions. The structure of these strategies...

Why, When, and How Do We Clean a Backlog Teams working in an agile way commonly use a backlog. However, teams often find that managing a backlog becomes more complex than expected once it begins to fill up. We can agree on the importance of managing the backlog. When used properly, the backlog should be the core repository for requirements (with product backlog items referencing other artefacts as...