A few months ago a friend asked me about setting up a bonus scheme at his work. From working with Scrum and Kanban teams, I know that bonuses are counter-productive anywhere team members are doing knowledge work and their work is interdependent. The same might apply in other areas too, but I know this to […]
Want to Get the Most Bang for Your Buck? Try Impact Mapping
Work is humming along nicely when your Marketing VP stops by your desk and says, “We need to double monthly sales.” That’s it. That their entire instruction. After you recover from this bombshell, you will need to decide what tool you will use and who you will grab to help you start to tackle this […]
Why are Group Decision-making Techniques Important?
Whether we’re facilitating Retrospectives, Sprint Planning, or a Strategy session, there are always decisions needed. How you approach those decisions should vary depending on the degree of cost and whether the decision is easily reversible or not. Given the speed at which Agile moves, we can’t afford a lot of time spent waiting for simple […]
Future Perspective for Change: Why Backcasting Helps Get You Where You Want to Be
When a product team starts work on a product, it’s important that they understand the vision. This is, as they say, a bit of a no-brainer since otherwise they might build something that completely misses the mark. In a modern Agile world, we’re expecting a mix of Product Management, Developers, ScrumMaster, the Customer and perhaps […]
Two Key Things for Sprint Retrospective Facilitation
Retrospectives are a critical element in Scrum but they won’t work well if your team hates them. A Sprint Retrospective needs someone to facilitate and keep it on track to encourage effective discussion. It’s more of an art than a science, but these key things will help. 1. Remain Neutral From the Cambridge Dictionary, facilitation […]
Be Better with Better Data
Data and metrics are not synonymous. Let’s tackle that misunderstanding right out of the gate. Data is a number or set of numbers. “Three days.” There. That’s data. Is it useful to you? Of course not, because you have no context to go with it. Metrics is the context and measurement of where, and under […]
