Tag Archives: Agile coach
It’s MAD to Use Discovery to Justify the Solution
Have you ever had an executive, a board member, or some other high-ranking person tell you what to build? How were you able to stand up to them? And keep your job? Decreeing the solution happens with such regularity that my Product Owner course is designed to mimic the situation.
What are you passionate about?
At Rally, Tim asked me this in my interview. And as we went through a recent company retreat, Jeff asked me this a few times. Here’s my answer. Continue reading
Dealing With an Overwhelming Amount of Work
I located a job as an Agile Coach working at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. I worked with a group of internal coaches, offering both training and coaching for the nearly 500 teams that were experimenting with the Scrum framework inside the organization. My directive there was to observe teams in action and offer help when asked. Observing Team Behavior Pretty soon I was invited by a Product Owner to observe his team’s stand-up. This team sensed that something wasn’t right with their Scrum implementation and he was seeking advice. They had also recently lost their ScrumMaster and people were … Continue reading
Ten Tales of Positive Change – Introduction
Reading that AgileScout is looking for case studies and not just the theory of Agile, I thought I might start posting these stories from my career. These come from an IEEE paper that was first published for Agile2011. The paper is too long for one blog post. Leaving the tales as close to the original as I can, I am posting each one as a separate article. Ten Tales of Positive Change Is it possible to make a difference? Or at least enjoy the interactions more? These tales relate successful attempts at making improvements. They are my experiences working in software … Continue reading
Inside the #lsmsf Lean Startup Machine
For the first time since snowboarding for a living, I once again love my job as an Agile coach. Sometimes I wonder if working with transforming large enterprises would be easier if I invested some time working with younger people attempting newer concepts in smaller companies. I got my first chance to test that theory the weekend of 16 Jan by joining The Lean Startup Machine in San Francisco. The picture to the left links to a book we were all given as homework to read for the event. While I did skim it, along with the Lean Startup Machine … Continue reading