The Daily Standup

The Light on Maple Street — A Holiday Story About Small Acts That Become EverythingIt started with one string of lights. Maple Street was the kind of block where porches still had rocking chairs and everyone knew which mailboxes belonged to which dog. In late November, between the first frost and the rush of the season, the Wilsons put up a single strand of blue bulbs across their porch. They’d ju...

So, what does a Project Manager actually do? Ah, the eternal question. What does a PM actually do? Well, most people think it’s the easiest job in the world — after all, you just tell everyone else what to do, right? Sure, if you also enjoy being the middle child in a family of stress-addicted workaholics with a taste for crises. In the last decade or so, I’ve worked in everything from Fortune 500...

Are You Protecting Your Team Against the Right Thing? - Mike CohnA lot has been written and said about the responsibility of a Scrum Master to protect the team. Examples of protecting the team typically involve running interference with well-meaning but overzealous product owners, stakeholders, and managers. Teams run into trouble all the time from people who want it all now or who keep adding mor...

Is Scrum Slowly Taking Away Your Will To Live? On the surface, it sounds innocent, doesn’t it? Cheerful even. Like something British schoolchildren might play on a muddy field before promptly breaking an ankle. But no. In reality, Scrum is a framework for managing work in software development, and it is somehow both wildly popular and completely misunderstood by… well, almost everyone. How to conn...

Project Manager vs Product Manager vs Business AnalystYou’ve probably heard the terms project manager, product manager, and business analyst tossed around like interchangeable buzzwords. But let’s be honest — most posts explaining these roles either put you to sleep or leave you more confused than before. So let’s break it down properly. No jargon. No textbook talk. Just real, human language. How...

The Black Friday That Bought a Neighborhood BackThe Bell & Book was a tiny independent bookstore wedged between a dry cleaner and a pawnshop on a corner that hadn’t seen much sparkle in years. Its owner, Marta, had run it for twenty years: poetry nights, school field-trip discounts, repair-your-soul advice between the biographies. Two months before Thanksgiving, a national big-box retailer ann...

The Thanksgiving Sprint — an AgileDad storyIt started two years ago in a neighborhood I know well — a mix of veterans, young families, recent transplants, and folks who’d been in the same house so long they remembered when the stoplight at the corner was just a tree. Someone on the block said aloud what people often think but don’t say: “We’ve got plenty, but a lot of us are missing the parts that...

Can teams pull in more work during a sprint? - Mike Cohn“Can we bring in more work if we’re ahead in a sprint?" It’s one of the most common questions I get from Scrum teams — and honestly, for a long time, I couldn’t understand why. The answer felt obvious. Of course you can bring in more work if you're ahead and clearly going to finish everything you committed to do. Just like you can drop work i...

Most Backlog Management Is Just Organized ProcrastinationWe’ve been told the backlog is how we steer. How we prioritise. How we plan. So we invest hours, maybe days, maintaining it: Refinement sessions Estimation rituals (battles?) Prioritisation debates Acceptance criteria roulette How to connect with AgileDad:- [website]  ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram]  ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agil...

What Makes a Great Product Manager? When I first stepped into product management, I had no idea what I was signing up for. I thought it was about building cool features, running a few sprints, and celebrating launch days with cake and confetti. What I didn’t expect? The emotional rollercoaster of stakeholder battles, last-minute pivots, and the constant juggling between what’s ideal and what’s pos...

A Home That Rebuilt a Life” — the story of Army veteran Sean KarpfAfter stepping on an IED in Afghanistan, Army Sergeant Sean Karpf faced years of surgeries, rehab, and the long, slow work of rebuilding a life altered by injury. What changed everything was not a single miracle but a community-backed act of care: Homes For Our Troops (HFOT) built and donated a specially adapted, mortgage-free home...

5 Essential Skills Every Scrum Master NeedsBeing a Scrum Master isn’t just about booking meetings and quoting the Scrum Guide. It’s about showing up every day as a change agent — the one who helps people work better together, face complexity with courage, and actually deliver value. It’s easy to forget that Scrum is fundamentally about people. Your job as a Scrum Master is to unlock that potential...

10 Mistakes Enterprises Make When Scaling Agile — and How to Avoid ThemWhen I walk into a Fortune 500 boardroom and hear, “We’ve adopted Agile,” I brace myself. Usually, what follows is a whirlwind of rebranded status meetings, overwhelmed middle managers, and teams confused about whether they’re sprinting or slowly marching in circles. Enterprise Agile transformations are rarely short on ambition...

If You Want Better Stories, Stop Writing Them All YourselfI’ve talked to a lot of product owners who are drowning in tickets, trying to “get ahead” by writing every single user story themselves. I used to be one of them. And every sprint, we’d slip. Morale tanked. The team blamed the process, and I blamed myself. But after one conversation — and one uncomfortable realization — I found a single thr...

Velocity = The Most Abused Agile Metric EverWelcome to the dark side of velocity — the number that started as a planning aid and ended up as a weaponized performance metric, often wielded by people who’ve never touched a user story in their lives. In this episode, we’ll break down: What velocity is supposed to do How it gets misunderstood and misused Why chasing it kills team health And how to bri...

A Make-A-Wish That Turned Into a Gift for OthersWhen Karina’s Make-A-Wish moment arrived, she didn’t ask for a trip or a celebrity meet-and-greet. Instead she asked to create a day for other sick kids — a place where they could forget hospitals and treatments for a while. Make-A-Wish marked Karina’s request as their historic 500,000th wish and worked with partners to turn it into a virtual “camp”...

The Heart of New Leadership is CuriosityMost of us are drawn to rules and limits. They give us a sense of safety. Structure and predictability offer comfort: we know what to expect, and what’s expected of us. For a while, this feels like stability. But in truth, it often leads to stagnation. The artist doesn’t value safety and smallness. The artist values discovery. To create something new, you ha...

Is your team moving in sync—or spinning in circles? - Mike CohnEver feel like your agile team should be working smoothly—but something’s just a bit off? Handoffs feel clunky. Meetings drag. Even small changes spark big debates. It’s not that your team isn’t skilled—it’s that you’re not quite in sync. Rowers have a word for the alignment you’re seeking: swing. What is swing? In crew rowing, swing i...

Today we remember Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Petry - Happy Veterans DayOn May 26, 2008, in Paktya Province, Afghanistan, Army Ranger Leroy A. Petry and his team were ambushed. During the firefight an enemy grenade landed near Petry and several fellow Rangers. Without hesitation Petry grabbed the grenade and attempted to throw it away from the group. The grenade detonated as he was throwing it; Petry sur...

How To Align Your Team Before Year-End - 5 Things You Must Do NOW! 1. Call Out the Elephant in the Room2. Don’t Let the Momentum Stall3. Run an Assets & Liabilities Exercise4. Revisit Your Purpose Statement5. Consider a Design SprintHow to connect with AgileDad:- [website]  https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram]  https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook]  https://www.facebook.com/Re...

The Hand Written Letter of GratitudeIn a classroom study, students were asked to write a heartfelt letter of thanks to someone who had helped them and then read that letter aloud to the person in a surprise face-to-face meeting. The scene that followed — the surprised, emotional reactions from the recipients and the visible pride and relief on the students’ faces — was unforgettable. Beyond the mo...

How Do we GROW? - Getting People on The Same Page! Do you know the Acronym GROW? G = GoalsR = Reality O = Options, Opportunities, and ObstaclesW = What We Will Commit to do First... 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/l...

Are You Protecting Your Team Against the Right Thing? - Mike CohnA lot has been written and said about the responsibility of a Scrum Master to protect the team. Examples of protecting the team typically involve running interference with well-meaning but overzealous product owners, stakeholders, and managers. Teams run into trouble all the time from people who want it all now or who keep adding mor...

No, Product Management Isn’t Useless — You’re Just Doing It WrongIf you think PMs just write tickets and slow things down, you haven’t seen product management done right. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard some version of this: “Do we even need product managers anymore?” Usually, it comes after a failed launch, a bloated backlog, or a roadmap that reads like a Frankenstein wishlist stitc...

The Scrum Master Role Is Disappearing - Or Is It? The layoffs of 2023 told a story that few in the tech industry wanted to acknowledge. Among the 120,000+ tech workers who lost their jobs, Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches were disproportionately represented. But this wasn’t just about economic belt-tightening it was the culmination of a quiet revolution that’s been brewing for years. How to connect...