Agile starting in kindergarten?

Earlier this year my daughter came to work with me. Although she was only 6 years old at the time, she came to co-deliver a day in the agile coaching course that I was running. It was interesting to watch as she explained the growth mindset, “golden conversations” and the importance of mixing both persistence […]

Basic feedback

I was running a course for agile team facilitators and coaches and we discussed “giving feedback.” It turned out that everybody was giving feedback but some of the crew were not confident that they were doing it well. I mentioned this to the crew in another course and people again mentioned that this was a […]

A slightly modified release planning game – the lost alphabet 2018 version

I invented a release planning game many years ago and I have used it in training quite a few times. Then Eduardo Meira Peres invented a much simpler version. Teams must use sprints to recreate the alphabet after society forgot how to spell words. The game covers concepts like sprints, velocity and adaptive planning in […]

Agile versus knowledge part one – stories are great

Last week I gave a talk for business analysts in Sydney on “documentation for agile teams” My talk did not really contain anything too radical, but it did draw a reasonable crowd, with 80 business analysts making time to come after a full day of work. So why did 80 people turn up when, being […]

Why are people backing away from agile? Theory one – losing sight of craftsmanship

Agile approaches are great and I even tell my friends to use them. But recently I have noticed some organisations backing away from their agile implementations. It got scarier when I noticed that Ron Jeffries, one of the original signatories to the Agile Manifesto, wrote an article titled “Developers should abandon agile.” It’s a good […]

Where have all the agile coaches gone? Ping me if you find one.

A couple of months ago someone asked me if I know a good agile coach in Sydney Australia. I thought I would be able to say yes because I am a hip dude who is in contact with the in crowd. But it turns out my language is dated and a bit out of touch. […]

Quick update – where to find techniques on my blog

I often write about approaches that teams have used to solve problems, get going in their agile journey and similar things. But it can be hard to find things in a blog. So here is an index with links to many of the approaches and suggestions that I have shared over the years. Kings Guide […]