The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

Trick-or-treaters Leave Their Halloween Candy For Child Battling Leukemia A search for  hope  at the end of this very anxious week led me to this humble bundle.  Zoe, 3, is the proud product of TJ and Courtney Thomas of Atlanta, Georgia. Back in February, Zoe was diagnosed with leukemia. And because her immune system is now compromised, she couldn't go trick-or-treating on Halloween with all t...

Witch’s Brew of Metrics — Don’t Let Vanity Hex Your Team Metric definition template Name: What it measures: Owner: Frequency: Thresholds / signals: Action when threshold met: 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/leehens...

Poltergeist Meetings — When Meetings Throw Things At You... 5 micro-rituals (practical) Purpose line on invite — one sentence: “Decision needed / Sync / Info.” Time-boxed agenda — 3 bullets with owner & minutes. No Rotating facilitator — prevent single-person theater. Two-minute rule — speakers over two minutes get a “parking lot” nudge. Outcome artifact — one sentence note added to the meetin...

The Phantom Sprint — Invisible Work That Steals Velocity Your sprint looks healthy — until a phantom dependency eats your finish line. Here’s how to find the invisible work before the demo. Detection & prevention tactics Dependency board : visible KANBAN lane for external asks with owners and ETA. Capacity buffer : protect 10–20% of sprint for unplanned but likely work. Pre-planning checkpoint...

The Haunted Backlog — When Old Stories Won’t Die Triage: Mark backlog items > 90 days old as “graveyard candidates.” Reframe: Turn vague epics into a one-sentence outcome + metric. If you can’t, bury it. Timebox an experiment: If still valuable, create a 1-week spike with a clear success metric. Assign ownership: No owner = forever ghost. Give it to someone accountable for outcome vs. activity....

A Chad Gymnast Scores Top Marks For Determination The wall behind her is pockmarked and worn. She’s barefoot against a hard, cracked floor. And yet Achta Derib’s pose in this photograph by Antonio López Díaz, a finalist in the professional sports category at the  Sony world photography awards , suggests reserves of determination that will carry her across continents to perform at the highest lev...

Stop Worshipping Product Roadmaps A few years ago, I sat through a two-hour planning session where we debated every line of a shiny new roadmap. By the end, we had a color-coded masterpiece: features neatly slotted by quarter, dependencies tracked, and timelines locked... How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [f...

The Only Three Things You Must Do To Improve Agility - Mike Cohn Distilled to its essence, it’s quite simple to be a Scrum Master, agile coach, or anyone seeking to improve team or organizational agility. There are only three things you need to do and Saint Francis laid them out succinctly over 800 years ago:     To improve agility, we have to start with what’s necessary. Change practices that go...

Agile Estimation: Relative vs. Absolute Estimation in Agile isn’t about predicting the future — it’s about  creating a shared understanding of work . Whether you’re planning a sprint or sizing up your backlog, you’re not aiming for perfect accuracy. You’re trying to get close enough to make smart decisions as a team. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram...

Scrum Theatre and the Agile Illusion Imagine your team having a perfect stand-up. Everyone’s smiling, and it seems like everything is going smoothly. Everyone says that they do not have any blockers for today and that all’s well. Each person on the team is relaxed, and your Scrum Master is grinning from ear to ear. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] ...

The Janitor at NASA In the early 1960s, during the height of the space race, President John F. Kennedy toured NASA headquarters. The country was locked in fierce competition with the Soviet Union to put the first man on the moon, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher. As JFK walked through the facility, he paused when he noticed a janitor sweeping the hallway late in the evening. Curious, the P...

ScrumMasters and Office Politics The art of pushing through a battlefield with only your laptop in hand — office politics. You can see on this battlefield, the Scrum Master, a leader without any official authority. The person people listen to when they feel like it, but takes all the blame when things go awry. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  http...

Team Dynamics - The Soloist - Mike Cohn It’s always great when a high performer joins a team. A true star can elevate everyone through their attitude, ability, and commitment. Think of them like a brilliant musician in a band—a lead guitarist or vocalist who’s not just talented, but who listens, collaborates, and knows how to bring out the best in everyone else. They don’t just shine—they make the...

When Agile Meets Resistance You’ve probably heard Agile being described as a novel way of navigating productivity at work, that it could boost collaboration, and uplift your teams into a well-oiled machine. That’s what they say, but how true is this? Especially in the IT culture? In reality, when Agile is incorporated into traditional IT culture, it seems like a wreck than a harmonious integration...

Scrum Has Become a Nice Term to Hide Bad Management Once a wise man said: Fire all Scrum Masters and your non-technical managers who run your IT departments, and watch your productivity to boost up! In most cases, all you need is to hire highly-experienced Tech Leads and show trust in them. Communicate with them and share your insights, answer their questions, and provide them with what they need,...

One Last Lap - How a Coach Changed Lives Listen in and learn how one attentive coach ran one last lap to help change the lives of countless students. 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/

ScrumBan... Is it real? Or just Camouflage? Let’s get this straight. Every time someone tells me they’re doing  Scrumban , I raise an eyebrow. Not because I doubt hybrids. Hybrids can be powerful. But because in my experience,  Scrumban is rarely a sign of maturity — it’s usually a cry for help. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagr...

How to Engage Busy Stakeholders - Mike Cohn We often find ourselves reliant on others outside the team. For example, an agile team may get stuck waiting for feedback on the latest features or input on what to build next because a key stakeholder has never shown up for a sprint review. Without that stakeholder’s feedback, the team is impeded: unable to determine if what they’ve created is what’s ne...

Clarity Is the Secret Weapon of Agile! We often mistake transparency for clarity. Transparency just means the information is available. Clarity means you can actually see. Clarity is not dumping everything on the table. It’s making sense of it. It’s vision. It’s seeing... How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [f...

Burnout Is NOT a Agile Problem - It Is A Planning Problem I remember a sprint planning meeting a few months ago, and I knew the sprint was doomed before it even started. Not because of bugs or blockers — those we could handle. It was the way everyone looked during planning: like we were gearing up for a marathon we hadn’t trained for. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad...

5 “Healthy” Habits That Are Quietly Aging You You swapped breakfast for a smoothie. You do long cardio and skip weights. You religiously avoid fat. You graze all day. You think stress management means just relaxing. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook]  https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linke...

Is Scrum Dying? Or Are We Just Doing It Wrong? Scrum used to be king. Now people don’t even want it on their CV. Remember when being a Product Owner was cool? When Scrum Masters were change agents, not glorified note-takers? When saying “we use Scrum” signalled progressive, Agile thinking? Fast forward to now, and you’ll find Product Owners ashamed of the title, Scrum Masters sidelined, and develo...

Is it ever OK to deviate from the Scrum Guide? - Mike Cohn I’m out there on social media and I see all the same posts you do about the sanctity of the Scrum rules. And I get it. There are many rules of Scrum that teams break when they shouldn’t. But I don’t think it does anyone any good to be so hung up on rules that you throw practicality out the window. Here’s the thing: No team should break a S...

The 5 Stages of Leadership The Doer  — You deliver results by doing everything yourself. The Fixer  — You solve everyone else’s problems. The Enabler  — You empower others to solve problems and grow. The Multiplier  — You build systems that scale others’ success. The Shaper  — You shape culture, vision, and the next generation of leaders. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agil...

Scrum Masters, You’re Not Just the Meeting Person You set up the standup, run a clean retro, update the board — and yet, nothing really changes.  Dependencies still hit late. Stakeholders still ask for fixed timelines. The team’s doing its best, but it always feels like someone  outside  is pulling the rug. Sound familiar? That’s because agility doesn’t stop at the team boundary. And if you’re onl...