Companies are starting to fall into a trap, and it goes something like this, “Our partners/competitors/… are Agile, so we need to be Agile.” Becoming Agile without a valid reason will harm your organization. I can’t state that any simpler. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, rival manufacturers often visited Toyota plants, and Toyota was delighted […]
Teams
Taking Organizational Improvement Seriously – Case Study
(Presented as an accompanying case study to Part 4 in the Scrum Alone is Not Enough series.) In the previous post, we discussed how it’s not enough to practice Scrum at the Team level and expect that it will solve all problems. Senior Management has to get involved for real Agile change to happen and […]
Taking Organizational Improvement with Scrum Seriously
(Presented as Part 4 in the Scrum Alone is Not Enough series, and accompanied by this worked example of Organizational Improvement in WorldsSmallestOnlineBookstore.) If Agile change initiatives don’t produce at least the doubling in productivity that is possible, it’s often because Scrum is used as a wrapper around the current state of work, but the organization […]
Portfolio Management – Idle Teams
(Continued from Portfolio Management Part 1 in the Scrum Alone is Not Enough series.) Imagine that the Portfolio Management group is giving the individual Product Owners a budgetary envelope of an approximate size. As Product Owners, we expect to make small bets on individual User Stories that will deliver value to the customer. The Portfolio Management group […]
5 Steps for Creating High-Performance Teams eBook
Certified Scrum Trainer Mark Levison has been around the block, more than a few times, and he was getting frustrated by what he saw happening in Scrum. When Mark is invited into businesses and industries to talk with Scrum teams, it’s typically with the request to help them do Scrum better so they can be more […]
Welcome to the High-Performance Teams Game
Your team is working on the World’s Smallest Online Bookstore, a site that provides the best results (just a few) for every search, not every result on earth. We’re a vulture capital funded company, so if we don’t deliver, our funding will be cut. So begins the opening of the High-Performance Teams Game. My goal […]
Scrum by Example – ScrumMaster for Three Teams? What are the Alternatives?
A company adds teams but wants to keep the same number of ScrumMasters. Smart move or disaster? This case study examines how to handle such a situation.
Scrum by Example – Overtime on a Scrum Team is an Unhealthy Sign
A case study of why overtime in an Agile environment doesn’t work. What pitfalls result, and how ScrumMaster and Product Owner can help the team avoid them.