The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

$1 from 130,000 Strangers: Bella’s Viral Mission to Reclaim Her Great-Aunt’s Home Fourteen-year-old Bella had a dream: to bring back into her family the little 1950s house next door — the home that once belonged to her great-aunt and uncle. With six brothers and sisters, a part-time job at her dad’s sno-cone stand, and a barely-used TikTok account, she launched a wildly ambitious idea: what if 130...

Setting and Managing Expectations - Mike Cohn My first Scrum project was incredibly successful, yet it was almost a failure. All of the technical aspects of the project were going extremely well. We were ahead of schedule, stress and scalability tests showed that we'd exceed uptime and reliability goals. Everyone on the team was having fun and doing their best work. The problem was that user e...

How to Say No Without Killing Innovation Have you also felt stretched too thin, saying “yes” to everything and watching your product get bloated and unfocused? I’ve been there. As a PM, you know that  saying no  isn’t just necessary it’s your secret weapon for driving meaningful product impact. But let’s be clear: saying no doesn’t mean stifling ideas or shutting down innovation. It’s about  strat...

Scrum IS a Delivery Framework - NOT a Ceremonial Cult They say Scrum is easy to understand, hard to master. I’d say it’s easy to  misunderstand , and even easier to fake. Let’s not talk about standups, reviews, or retrospectives just yet. Let’s start deeper — from the  inside out . How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_c...

Teacher Reveals Heartbreaking Reason Behind Her Ocean-Themed Classroom One teacher was used to her father's support in everything from big dreams to classroom decor, but after his sudden death in March 2025, that steady presence was gone How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook]  https://www.facebook.com/...

Symptoms Of Moving Without a Vision In the absence of a clear and shared vision, every team, leader, and individual will fill that gap with their own beliefs, experiences, and expectations. It may appear to be “diversity of opinion,” but in practice, it often results in misalignment. Every strategic conversation becomes a clash of narratives. This fragmentation of understanding is just one of many...

Small Changes That Made Our Daily Stand-Ups More Useful Daily stand-ups are a cornerstone of agile software development — but often they’re seen as a burden or a distraction. Why? Because they frequently devolve into long status reports that bore participants and add little real value. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agi...

The Agile Family Tree: Theme, Epic, Feature and User Story Explained “Let’s group this into a theme, break it down into epics, then into features and finally user stories.” Sure. Cool. Great. Just one question: what does any of that  actually  mean? If you’ve ever nodded along in a backlog grooming session while secretly wondering whether an epic is bigger than a feature or the other way around —...

Is Your Team Heading For a Win? It’s officially the end of summer here in the U.S. Part of me is sad. Cooler temps mean it’s time for me to hang up my wakeboard and store my boat for the season. But part of me welcomes the move to falling leaves, long sleeves, and Major League Baseball playoffs. I’m a big Dodgers fan, and I’m hoping they make it to the post-season again this year. But even if my t...

Teen Gets Adopted After Almost 15 Years In Foster Care An Arkansas teen’s life was changed forever when he was  adopted  after almost 15 years in foster care. Cozy, 19, had been in foster care for 5,429 days and was the longest-waiting person in the Arkansas foster care system, per local news outlet  KARK.com . Tim and Anna Dietrich adopted Cozy on Monday, Aug. 25. Anna works for the nonprofit  Pr...

Happy Patriot Day - Just Serve The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) members participate annually in the National 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance, also known as Patriot Day, by organizing and joining various community service projects through initiatives like  JustServe.org . These activities, which can take place on September 11th or during the broader month of September, incl...

OKR's At Google and Amazon You’d think a company with tens of thousands of employees, layers of hierarchy, and complex workflows would slow down innovation to a crawl. Yet somehow, giants like Google, Amazon, and Intel manage to launch cutting-edge products, drive bold initiatives, and keep their teams aligned and motivated. Welcome to the world of OKRs — Objectives and Key Results. What’s the...

5 Habits of High Performing Teams What makes some teams do exceptionally well, and others perform poorly? Do they have more talented team members, better resources, or are they simply being lucky? Teams that stand out are not more talented, better skilled, or have greater opportunities. What sets them apart are their habits and practices. Empowering work culture, support from leaders in the organi...

Making Invisible Work Visible Lately I noticed, sprint velocity looked fine and Jira showed progress. But none of the key tests, critical analysis and silent validations are tracked. After my observations I questioned: How much of our real work is visible? In Agile teams, productivity is often measured by delivered outputs: written code, released features, completed user stories, increasing metric...

NFL Athlete Makes a Difference in a Young Mans Life A young boy who burst into tears upon learning that NFL defensive end Micah Parsons was leaving the Dallas Cowboys for the Green Bay Packers got some closure. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook]  https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] ...

Leading With Vision That is Rooted in Presence A leader cannot see clearly if they are clouded by ego, attachment, or fear. Desires, frustrations, unhealed stories — all of these act as filters. They color what we think is “the future” with the palette of our past. To truly see a vision for others, the leader must first become still. Presence is not passivity. It’s clarity. It’s the willingness to...

Consider The Downstream Effects - Mike Cohn Have you ever looked at the pipes under a bathroom or kitchen sink? If you do, you’ll notice that the pipe doesn’t run straight from the sink to the wall. Instead the pipe from the drain goes down farther than necessary, curves right back up and then heads into the wall. This little extra bit of pipe that goes down farther than necessary and u-turns back...

The Birth of the Agile Delivery Manager = No More ScrumMasters In 2025, we formally changed the title of Scrum Master to  Agile Delivery Manager (ADM)  in our technology division. This renaming wasn’t a rebrand for the sake of optics. It reflected a deeper evolution already happening, rooted in the expanding scope of delivery leadership, the adoption of Flow Metrics and Value Stream Management, an...

Scrum often gets blamed for a lot of things it was never meant to do. Misused? Absolutely. Misunderstood? All the time. But the framework itself? Not the villain here. It is tiresome to see so many people complaining without truly understanding the purpose and intention of the frameworks. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/...

9 Daily ChatGPT Uses That Will Literally Change Your Life 1. Instant Book Summaries (Absorb Knowledge Fast) 📚 2. Personalized Workout & Nutrition Plans 🏋️‍♀️🍎 3. Perfect Email & Message Crafting ✉️ 4. Everyday Tech Troubleshooting 💻📱 5. Out-of-the-Box Idea Generation & Problem Solving 💡 6. Language Learning & Practice Partner 🗣️🌍 7. Mock Interview Powerhouse 👨‍💼 8. Real-Tim...

3 Critical Skills That I Have Learned as an Agile Coach 1. Be Prepared for Chaos 2. 0.5 Step Further Mindset 3. Let Them 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 If Scrum Masters Only Want To Act On A Team Level? I recently had an interesting conversation with a manager at a large organization. We discussed the evolving role of Scrum Masters, the growing questions about their value, and whether organizations are seeing actual returns on these investments. 💰 We agreed that the most significant impact for Scrum Masters is not within the team, but in th...

Are You Chasing ScrummerFalls? You can be pure Agile, you can be pure Waterfall, but have you ever been Waterfalling Agile? I have seen Waterfalling Agile, and it’s not a good scene. Essentially, when you are doing the worst of both worlds, thinking you are on top by taking the best of both, but you are wrong. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  http...

Why Is Your Team Skipping Daily Standups? Standups have become a way of life — not only for software teams but everyone else — they are the checkpoint on the day as to how we are doing, what’s working and what we need to do. If ever there was a meeting to attend, to get the pulse of what is happening in your team, it would be this meeting, and yet people skip them when other meetings conflict, or...

Empowering a Future Generation How can you assist in empowering the younger generation? What can we do to make their dreams come true? 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/