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Exploring the controversy around SAFe’s approach to Product Ownership

By |2023-05-08T18:22:55-04:00May 8, 2023|Agile Theater, Blog, Product Ownership, SAFe, Scrum|

Exploring SAFe’s Approach to Product Ownership What is SAFe’s perspective on the Product Owner role? How does it differ from the Scrum Guide? Why is Product Ownership split to Product Owner and Product Manager in SAFe? SAFe’s approach to Product Ownership draws quite a bit of criticism. As a Professional Scrum Trainer who’s also a SAFe Fellow/SPCT, here’s my perspective…   Product Ownership is a crucial element in improving Outcomes SAFe and Scrum both consider product ownership crucial to maximizing [...]

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The Next Agile Frontier – Agile Company Development

By |2023-05-11T19:31:50-04:00April 13, 2023|Business Agility|

Dealing with common business challenges through agility I’ve been helping companies improve their operations for over a decade. A repeating pattern is where a very successful company is facing growing pains affecting its ability to scale to the next level. Some examples of the challenges I’m called in to help with: Losing the Ability to Innovate You often see companies that grow successfully to the point where it seems their ability to innovate stalls. When you look deeper, you see them [...]

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The Future of Agile Roles != The Future of Agility

By |2023-01-26T09:28:31-05:00January 26, 2023|Agile, Current Events, SAFe, Scrum|

The story of Capital One laying off hundreds of people in Agile roles is making the rounds. I have no direct connection to Capital One, so I can't comment about what's going on there.  What I can share is for years now, I've been coaching companies and leaders to see the Scrum Master and similar roles like the SAFe RTE as accountabilities relevant leaders take on (it can be formal managers/leaders or natural leaders from within teams that are passionate [...]

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Exploring the Connection Between Business Agility, OKRs and Private Equity – Interview w/ Yuval on the Quantive Dreams with Deadlines Podcast

By |2023-01-10T14:30:14-05:00January 10, 2023|Business Agility, Media, OKRs, Private Equity|

If you're here, you might be interested in OKRs. If so you should check out the Dreams with Deadlines podcast published by Quantive (formerly Gtmhub). I was delighted to accept an invitation to come on the podcast to discuss OKRs, Business Agility, Agile, Evidence-based management and the connection to increasing value creation e.g. in the Private Equity space. Check out the podcast here or in the embedded audio below. Dreams with Deadlines Podcast Interview with Yuval Yeret We discuss the role [...]

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Fix Your OKRs – Back to First Principles

By |2022-12-10T12:00:40-05:00December 7, 2022|Agility, Business Agility, Evidence-based Management, OKRs|

Context OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) have become the latest management framework to suffer the fate of becoming popular too quickly, to the point where in many organizations, OKRs are a theater/charade with little useful substance or benefits. That’s a shame because OKRs have huge potential if used effectively. So let’s go about fixing your OKRs!  Why OKRs Let’s start with the basics. What are OKRs even about?  OKRs aim to help you execute effectively on what matters most (your [...]

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Agility / Evidence-based Management and their role in improving returns in the Private Equity…

By |2022-12-02T13:05:21-05:00September 27, 2022|Business Agility, Evidence-based Management, Private Equity|

In this article, I’ll explore the need for and the attributes of an agile business operating system related to Private Equity (PE) portfolio companies. It hopefully helps leaders of such companies and PE professionals focused on the operations side expand their perspective on what “Agile” and “Agility” mean in their world and how they can help them improve returns realized in their investments.Dealing with common business challenges through agilityI’ve been helping companies improve their operations for more than a decade now. [...]

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Working towards Sustainable Pace in Scrum, SAFe and Kanban

By |2022-12-02T13:07:05-05:00December 6, 2021|kanban, SAFe, Scrum|

Aiming towards Sustainable Pace“Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.” — The Agile Manifesto Principle“programmers or software developers should not work more than 40 hour weeks, and if there is overtime one week, that the next week should not include more overtime.” — Extreme ProgrammingAn unsustainable pace is unhealthy. It contributes to burnout, quality issues, and unpredictable results.If you are an agile leader — do you know whether your teams are currently operating at [...]

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Connecting OKRs, KPIs, OVSs, and DVSs in SAFe® — Scaled Agile

By |2022-12-02T13:06:55-05:00December 1, 2021|OKRs, SAFe|

The title of my post may read like acronym soup but all of these concepts play a critical role in SAFe, and understanding how they’re connected is important to success. After exploring some connections, I will suggest some actions you can take while designing, evaluating, or accelerating your implementation.KPIs and OKRsThe SAFe Value Stream KPIs article describes Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as “the quantifiable measures used to evaluate how a value stream is performing against its forecasted business outcomes. “That includes:Health [...]

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Iterating faster with SAFe

By |2022-12-14T17:19:33-05:00November 30, 2021|Agility, SAFe, Scaled Agile|

Here’s a frequently asked question in the SAFe community: I wanted to understand what SAFe says about someone who wants to go faster than 2 weeks of iteration? I mean the whole PI concept is based on 5 iterations worth of planning. What if a team/organization wants to develop and synchronize faster than 2 weeks? Is speed going to be compromised by following the standards of PI cadence?Here’s my take:Adjusting Cadence Length in SAFe — Can you? Should you?SAFe considers the 2-week iteration [...]

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INVEST in effective SAFe PI Objectives

By |2022-12-14T17:19:40-05:00November 29, 2021|SAFe|

INVEST in effective SAFe PI ObjectivesCould the INVEST criteria Bill Wake came up with for evaluating User Stories help us come up with effective PI Objectives in SAFe as well?I think a good PI Objective should be:– Independent — meaning ideally it could be delivered and evaluated on its own without any dependency on other PI Objectives. And if a team is able to own a PI Objective and delivery it on their own — it’s a sign that it’s a cross-functional autonomous team.– [...]

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