The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

It should be blatantly obvious that Story Mapping and Backlog Refinement are Critical components that add to Agile Success! What are the key reasons we are facilitating these meetings and do they really make a difference? Join V. Lee Henson as we explore why this is so important nad how to keep things in context. 

V. Lee Henson, an expert in Deadline Driven Design, debates the notion of Agile deadlines being evil. Strategies discussed include setting Agile deadlines using story points and forecasting, date ranges, impact-driven roadmaps, engaging stakeholders, and fostering a culture of psychological safety.

How can we possibly narrow down the hundreds of Agile books to a single list of five that every ScrumMaster should read? Like this:  Essential Scrum by Ken Rubin Succeeding With Agile by Mike Cohn Scrum The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half The Time by Jeff Sutherland The Elements of Scrum by Chris Sims & Hillary Louise Johnson Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby & Diana Larsen

This inspirational story is one that is well known... But how often do we forget to take the time to sharpen oir saw before we try to cut down an entire forest? Join V. Lee Henson as we explore the story and the solution! 

What are the best and worst ways to measure team success? Join V. Lee Henson, President and Founder of AgileDad as we explore what metrics really matter! 

Your product vision ultimately answers the questions “why are we building this?” and “where is it headed in the future?” It’s the magnetic north for your team, and provides both a clearly defined direction for the team to build towards as well as a more ephemeral guide that whispers in the ears of every team member when they are faced with a fork in the road, and wonder which direction to go. Why does product vision matter to your engineers? Your engineers will feel significantly more connected to the mission of the company/product. It sparks the big ideas. It guides the small decisions. How do I better communicate the product vision? Document your product vision! Use Pictures. Tag your tickets/stories. Talk about it often. Update it often.  https://productcoalition.com/why-your-engineers-are-hungry-for-your-product-vision-1d7b2dba72f

What do you do when Scrum just is NOT enough? It is intended to be a framework, but so is SAFe? Do we bite the bullet and switch to something larger? Or do we stick with the smaller framework and build upon it? 

On this Independence Day, Agile leaders should be focused on and fighting for impact! Join the team at AgileDad as we celebrate Independence Day with you and your leaders! 

Who would have thought that I would craft a Friday episode around a quote from Katy Perry? Standing For Nothing = Falling For Everything! Do not let the world around you influence who you are and or how you feel. Stand above the clouds and do what you can to make a difference! 

As a kid, I enjoyed visiting my grandparents. My dad’s parents were an eight-hour car trip away but we’d make the trek a few times a year. On many of those trips, my grandmother would host extended family dinners, usually with quite a crowd in attendance. She served a great many dishes for those dinners, including some things from “the old country.” And some of those dishes looked quite unappealing to my young palate. But Grandma insisted we children try everything. As a matter of fact, she insisted we try two bites of everything. If we didn’t like it, we didn’t need to eat more. But we always had to eat two bites. Grandma’s theory was that things often taste much better on the second bite. I’ve found that Grandma’s logic applies equally well to changes teams make as a result of their retrospectives. I encourage teams to try new things for two sprints before deciding whether the change is good and worth continuing or not. Suppose, for example, a team decides to switch from two- to one-week sprints. That will undoubtedly feel a little strange at first. I tell that team not to discuss how the change went in the first retrospective following the change. I want them to save that discussion for after the second sprint. At that point they’ll have a much better feel for whether the change was good. They’ll be able to assess the effects of the change rather than just the discomfort of making a change. When I was young, I did as my grandmother required: I sampled each strange, new dish twice. Not surprisingly, my opinion never changed between bites. If I didn’t like the taste of the first bite, it never got better with the second bite. I was a kid, after all. But I have seen agile teams embrace after a second sprint the changes they might have rejected after a first sprint. That willingness to really try new things is critical for teams to succeed with agile, Mike