The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

The Top 10 Agile Questions We Should Be Asking Daily... How big or small is the scope of that item?  How confident are you in that estimate? What are the other options you considered before making this decision? What’s the worst thing that could happen if we pursue this direction? How are we going measure success? Do we need everyone who is here now? Should anyone else be here? Does anyone else ne...

We can learn so much about how people feel about something like teamwork just by asking questions. That’s especially true when we ask kids. I was traveling last month and ended up in line next to a father and his eight-year-old son. I made small talk with the Dad to pass time in line and learned that the son had just traveled with his team to take part in a hockey tournament. Because I was curious...

11 Tips To Help You Earn The Respect Of Others Sharpen up your physical appearance. Emotional control. Stop always being available. Unexpected flattery. Talk less. Be relaxed and move slow. Talk a fraction slower. Know your boundaries and exert them. Dress well. Stop trying to impress everyone. Hold people’s eye. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ...

Identify & Engage Your Stakeholders - What is the difference between a Key Stakeholder, Stakeholder, and Interested Party? There are in essence 4 categories these stakeholders fall into: Promoters  — high influence, high interest (upper right quadrant). Promoters are vital for success, and thus active engagement with this group is important to keep them informed. This group often influences ot...

The Benefits of Delaying Decisions - Mike Cohn I'm sitting in a hotel right now. I won’t fly home for several days. But once I arrive at the airport near home, I have a choice of two routes to get me all the way back to my house. Both routes start the same. But then I have a decision to make. I can either stay on the side streets or get on the highway. Usually the highway is the faster way hom...

4 Common Misconceptions About Agile Transformation The most popular misconception is that Agile is a set of practices and can be installed by trainers and coaches. This is the easy button form of Agile Transformation. You train your teams on Agile, the teams start using Agile, recognize their impediments, and change the systems to be more effective at delivery. In practice, most teams are not empo...

What Is The Agile Mindset? - Is it Culture? An Iterative Mindset . Create value in small, iterative steps allowing for early and frequent feedback on each piece of work, which helps eliminate waste and build better products faster. Be data-driven, evidence-based and use that data to decide what to do more of and what to do next. A Product Culture . Form long-lasting, durable, product teams that re...

Top 3 Things That Keep People Motivated 1. Autonomy The first motivational driver is autonomy.  Autonomy refers to how much people feel in control of their own life and able to make their own choices. In the context of work, autonomy means people feel they have a say in what they work on and how they work on it. They don’t feel micromanaged; they feel empowered by their managers to pursue objectiv...

3 Tips To Better Understanding Roles, Responsibilities, & Accountabilities Agile teams are rarely so simple as to have solely a Scrum Master, a Product Owner and a number of Developers. There may be others around the team supporting them in some way, or the team itself may simply be made up differently to this. There’s nothing wrong with this necessarily; but things can get complicated quite q...

How to Increase Stakeholder and Team Member Engagement Right from the Start - Mike Cohn Do you struggle to engage the right people in product development? You are not alone. Development team members sometimes view their jobs as things to be endured. They want to get through the 8-hour day, go home, and then do the things that really give them purpose. Customers sometimes really want the end-result...

What do we know about Sprint Goals? The 2020 Scrum Guide clearly states that a team commits to a Sprint Goal rather than how many User Stories the team can complete. Having a Sprint Goal is a great idea, but I often see it misfiring. The latest Scrum Guide focuses more on Sprint and Product goals, which is good. However, setting goals will only help us if we change our thinking from output to outc...

Join V. Lee Henson as we learn more about the history of Memorial Day and celebrate this special US based holiday tradition. 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/⁠

Georgia State University Hails First Class of Inmate Graduates In caps, gowns, and perhaps even ‘blues,’ 9 inmates at Walker State Prison in Georgia are set to receive their associates degrees for 60 credit hours of coursework done while incarcerated. 3 are graduating with highest honors (3.9 – 4.0 GPA) while the other 6 are gradutaing with high honors (3.7 – 3.89). Organized by Geogria State Univ...

What Are Non-Functional Requirements? I want to wrap up our back-to-basics series on user stories with a way to account for non-functional requirements in your backlog. Here in the U.S., we're in the midst of tax season. Our annual income taxes must be paid no later than April 18 this year. While thinking about—or gulp! actually paying—taxes is not very fun, it does provide a useful example of...

ScrumWOW - Scrum As An Infomercial Scrum is more than just a framework, it’s a way of life. It’s a framework that enables teams to work cohesively towards a common goal, and it’s not just for software development teams. It can be used for any project that requires teamwork. Scrum was first introduced in 1995 in “ The Scrum Guide ” and was based on the concept introduced in 1986 in the article “The...

Product - Platform - Service - What Is The Difference? Product: an item, physical, virtual, digital, or hybrid that is produced; OR a service offered for sale to serve a customer’s need or want; OR a metaphorical vehicle. A vehicle that continually runs like a digital product for delivering value, where external customers and end users know what is produced or served when we mentioned it and peopl...

That does it mean when I say Identifying and Managing All Debt - Not Just Technical Debt? Some organizations understand that they have debt, but they only take the time to think about the technical debt. How do we handle all of the other debt that needs to be addressed in a timely manner? Join V. Lee Henson as we discuss the best way to address the debt by using a debt cancel sprint cycle. How to...

Appreciation and gratitude are incredibly important for our mental and emotional well-being, as well as our relationships with others. When we practice appreciation, we focus on the positive qualities and actions of others, rather than taking them for granted or criticizing them. This can foster a sense of connection and positivity in our relationships, as well as increase our own sense of happine...

This week’s tip is about the imprecision of words. Take, for example, something I read on a website once: We provide bouncers for children’s parties. What did you think of when you read that? I thought of big, burly, heavily muscled men in tight T-shirts who won’t let certain kids into the backyard clubhouse. After seeing “we provide bouncers for children’s parties,” I was left wondering, what typ...

Do We Need an Agile Coach? Agile Coaches are creative, reflective and non-directive people who guide and mentor individuals or organizations through adopting Agile Framework or improving the current Agile system. Making significant organizational changes can be challenging since the members must learn to adapt and embrace changes. It might require a shift of cultures and even the way of Leadership...

I have a theory. And it’s not much different than my theory on how to be a good human. And it is a simple list. Before offering any advice or counsel to anyone, you must first earn their trust. And the best way to establish and build trust between two people is to offer it first. Express humility and genuine interest through showing vulnerability and asking questions to which you do not know the a...

Scrum is a path to business agility Organizations adopt Scrum to achieve business agility so they can manage uncertainty and risk in complex environments to achieve their goals. Scrum helps deliver high-value creative solutions in increments of value over short periods (no longer than a month), called Sprints.  The framework depends on having a clear vision and an understanding of what you want to...

24601 is the prisoner number and protagonist of the famous novel "Les Misérables" by Victor Hugo. His real name is Jean Valjean. Throughout the novel, Jean Valjean undergoes a profound transformation from a bitter and hardened criminal to a compassionate and virtuous man. There are several factors that contributed to Jean Valjean's transformation. Firstly, he was shown mercy and kind...

Agile Story Writing Workshops - The Boundaries - Mike Cohn Hi Lee, This tip continues our series where we go back to the basics of user story writing. This week I want to talk about story writing workshops and boundaries. Think outside the box. Do you hate that phrase as much as I do? It’s become another overdone business cliche. But it also bothers me because creativity often comes from thinking ...

What are 6 Agile Leadership Tips To Help Build AWESOME Agile Teams? Encourage Different Perspectives: Contrary to popular belief, teams work best when there are disagreements amongst the members on the best path to solve a problem. In the presence of different opinions and some constructive friction, the solution will be more innovative. Stabilize Teams: In contrast to our typical instinct, keepin...