I have clients in two diverse domains – material sciences and life sciences – that are currently investing in maturing their business agility using Scrum. Recently, both clients asked about introducing Six Sigma practices into their organizations. They pose the question – can Scrum and Six Sigma co-exist? The short answer – of course they…
Hey! Does your agile coach’s job look like fun? It is! I believe it’s the best career possible in the market today – and the need is growing. Every time I am at an agile event, people reach out to me telling me they want to get into coaching, or evolve into an agile…
Scrum Masters, are you a natural servant LEADER, or do you struggle to be the inspiring coach that creates high-performing teams? The following blog is inspired by Scott Watson’s work, an emotional intelligence speaker and trainer. I hope they will complement what you are already doing well and help you create a tactical plan to…
ProductCamp is an unconference that brings talent from the entrepreneurial, product, and IT space together in an exciting day of collaboration and networking. This event is held in several regions nationwide, and now we want to bring it to Tampa! Please visit ProductCampGulfCoast.org This site currently hosts a very short survey that will help us…
Stop being good at process and start being good at business! Evolve your PMO from process-centric to people-centric with what I call the the Minimum Viable Artifacts. These are three actions, with outputs, that I believe are the 3 ingredients to a Lean PMO. Interested in learning more? I’m speaking about this at Orlando’s ProjectSummit,…
Once I got a $30,000 raise. It was the worst job I ever had. In order to get a raise, I had to leave a good job. (More thoughts on that later.) As a single provider, the overnight increase put me in a state of near ecstasy. It was The Motivating Factor to leave that…
Agile – it’s not just for IT anymore. The technology arena is saturated with agile – particularly in software development with the maturity of Scrum and the lean method of Kanban. The momentum created by the successes of collaboration, transparency, and adaption in a technology group naturally seeps into the rest of the organization. It’s…
[Disclaimer #1: Warning: strong Scrum language ahead. If you don’t speak Scrum, you can make it through this blog, but you might need to review the Scrum Guide. For example, I use the Scrum term Product Backlog Item (PBI) which can indicate any requirement in the backlog. The PBI might be in the form of a User Story, but a PBI can…
Me: I’ve fallen in love with Kanban again. My friend: Um, yeah… Who is Kanban, again? From David Anderson, the founder of the Kanban movement: “with Kanban we’re using visualization, a working progress limit (WIP), and a quantitative measurement to stimulate Kaizen (Japanese for “improvements.”) Me: In Kanban, we show all of the work in…
I’m working with a colleague on a client’s organizational design issues. So I started to refresh my thinking with industry resources and reading. I call it “spring training” (even though as I write this, we are in the dog days of summer in the Sunshine State right now, with a hurricane or two thrown in…
