Improving a Team's Collective Intelligence. Feedback Please!
It seems all over nowadays. Teams do it, peers do it, managers do it. Feedback here, feedback there, feedback everywhere. Feedback seems here to stay. Why? Because it makes people stronger. They learn...
View ArticleOverburdening: how to cope with it and work is irrefutable
Sometimes teams must take up work that exceeds their capability. Consider a company policy that says 'The call desk picks up calls within 60 seconds'. This policy forces a call desk team to pick up new...
View ArticleAutonomy – Taking the wheel
I remember when the Product Owner stepped into our room with a new user story. He asked if we could make a minor change to one of our web pages. What he did not know is that nobody understood the code,...
View ArticleUsing Specification by Example / BDD for your refinements
When I’m joining new teams at clients it often becomes clear that the added value of refinements is not always seen. Team members complain that hours are wasted. The refinement sessions shouldn’t be...
View ArticleSPACEMAP – organising a motivational environment
Introducing the SPACEMAP! A ‘map’ to gain insight into motivational problems within an organization/department, so that coaches and managers no longer have to talk about vague motivation problems, but...
View ArticleScrum Master Q&A Fulltime Scrum Master Role
In my Scrum Master training courses, I get a lot of questions about the workload of a Scrum Master. One question I hear frequently is this: Is the Scrum Master role a full-time job? The answer is yes!...
View ArticleIs Scrum Agile and is Agile Scrum?
2 minutes read (drawing by Alexander) The short version: yes and no! Scrum is Agile but Agile is not (only) Scrum. Future Fit Organizations Organizations want to become flexible and Agile or as we...
View ArticleImproving a Team’s Collective Intelligence. Feedback Please!
It seems all over nowadays. Teams do it, peers do it, managers do it. Feedback here, feedback there, feedback everywhere. Feedback seems here to stay. Why? Because it makes people stronger. They learn...
View ArticleOverburdening: how to cope with it and work is irrefutable
Sometimes teams must take up work that exceeds their capability. Consider a company policy that says ‘The call desk picks up calls within 60 seconds’. This policy forces a call desk team to pick up new...
View ArticleAgile Toolkit
Pull coaching Traditional Agile Coaching goes like this: we take a look at what you are doing and we advise you what we think is a good next step in your growth and Agile Maturity. These next steps...
View ArticlePhysical and Digital tools for Scrum Masters and their teams
About 40 people gathered at the nlScrum meetup dedicated to physical and digital tools for the agile workspace. Tools that help developers, coaches and trainers to survive in the toughest environments....
View ArticleScaling Scrum to the limit
You’re likely to have been asked the question: “we need to go faster, how many more people do we need?” Most people naturally understand that just adding a random number of people isn’t likely to make...
View ArticleUse Mob Programming to maximize your learning
In every Scrum.org Professional Scrum Development class, we touch upon both technical and collaboration practices to help improve the development teams explore new options. In a recent class, we had...
View ArticleMore Physical and Digital tools for Scrum Masters and their teams
A couple of months ago I blogged about some of the tools and toys that live in the trunk of my car. I take these along everywhere I teach and coach. Since posting, people have suggested additional...
View ArticleCelebrating one year of Scrum Boosters!
History In 2014 I started at Xebia in the business unit Agile Consultancy and Training (ACT). Colleague Nicole Belilos took me under her wings and helped me develop and grow within this group of Agile...
View ArticleShut the door and listen from outside
At a certain point, you start to finish each other’s statements. Teams that have been together for a while can breed a sort of shorthand in their communication. This has a lot of upsides, but it can...
View ArticleAgile Chef
Agile Chef As a real ‘Foody’ I love to spend hours in the kitchen and experimenting. I also watch a lot of TV shows and documentaries about food. The other day I was watching an episode on Michelin...
View ArticleFive quality patterns in Agile development
In this blog series, I’ll discuss five quality patterns in Agile development to deliver the right software with great quality. For years now companies have been adopting Agile ways of working and...
View ArticleMulti products Scrum teams, how do you deal with that?
Multi Products Scrum teams are in reality observed often. One team serving different stakeholders and customer segments. Both would like to use the same people to work on their improvements. In most...
View ArticleFocus on what was “Done” during Sprint Review
As Scrum Trainer I get to meet a lot of teams and hear of many different ways to do Scrum. Most are valid ways, yet some seem more aligned with the values of Scrum or the purpose of the specific Scrum...
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