Webinar Recap: What’s Next? Agile Trends in 2019
2018 was a remarkable year for the Agile community. Agile is now expanding into new departments and industries. Companies are continuing to tackle the challenge of scaling Agile throughout their organization. More and more leaders are getting involved in their organizational transformations every day. What does this all mean for companies and their use […]
3 Ways To Use Servant Leadership In Your Organization
Servant leadership is a term that’s been around for decades. While it can sometimes feel overused or outdated, I believe the principles of servant leadership remain as relevant today as they’ve ever been. For example, a 2017 Gallup workplace poll found that roughly two-thirds of American employees are either not engaged or are actively disengaged […]
7 Steps to Building Durable Work Relationships and Effective Communication Skills
At work, “stuff” inevitably hits the fan–it’s just a matter of when. However, there are things you can do to ensure important workplace relationships weather any storm, regardless of its fury. The Problem We don’t often invest enough time in developing durable workplace relationships. Many of us just hope that when things get difficult, everyone […]
Architecture & Governance Magazine: “Report Suggests Agile Integration Is the ‘Blueprint for Enterprise Architecture,’ Expert Agrees”
By Holt Hackney, Originally Printed in Architecture and Governance Magazine In the first couple sentences of “Agile Integration: The Blueprint for Enterprise Architecture,” a recently released report by Red Hat, the authors write: “Business success is increasingly based on your ability to react to change. As new disruptive players enter markets and technology upends what […]
The 3 Principles Agile Leaders Should Live By During An Organizational Transformation
Today’s Agile leaders manage with a more complete arsenal of skills and techniques than leaders of the past who led fundamentally different teams. For Agile organizations, the days of top-down hierarchy and autonomous decision making have joined the floppy disk as obsolete and outdated concepts in modern business. Leaders still can be effective without following […]
Do I Have What It Takes To Lead An Agile Transformation? Top 3 Skills Of A Modern Agile Leader
In their 2016 article “Embracing Agile”, the Harvard Business Review points out that while leadership may vocally state their support of an Agile transformation and may even be the original champion, leadership misconceptions about what it takes to implement Agile often present huge challenges down the road. It states, “[Leaders] unwittingly continue to manage in […]
Is Your Organization Equipped With the Right Talent and Expertise to Become Agile?
“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if we are to get better.” — Georg C. Lichtenberg, German Philosopher and Physicist If your organization is just starting out on the Agile journey, alignment to Agile business initiatives is the first stage in the […]
Will Agile Deliver? Getting Your Peers On Board With Your Agile Transformation
It takes a village to make an Agile transformation successful in any company. Leaders who’ve decided to implement Agile often find they need data and success stories they can offer their peers so the entire leadership team understands, supports, and feels confident in the decision to transform. The following are talking points for you to […]
Why we don’t re-estimate story points
To estimate or not? To re-estimate or not? This short article will tackle the second question. We’ll weigh in on #EstimateGate in a later blog post. Most teams are tempted to re-estimate stories once the Sprint has begun; as teams put fingers to keyboard, it is natural that they learn more about what is […]
What does a ScrumMaster Do Anyway?
We’ve discussed what a ScrumMaster is and what their main responsibilities are. We’ve even discussed the hard and soft skills needed to make a successful ScrumMaster (thanks, Leslie Knope). But, still, what does a ScrumMaster do anyway? What makes up an entire work day? How does their day (and their effectiveness) change as they engage […]