Making Agile Teams work in real life – The quest for Stable Feature Teams?

By Yuval Yeret|2014-08-07T16:28:05-04:00August 7, 2014|Blog, Change Management, Management, Scrum, Teams|

Context This post is inspired by ongoing discussions in the AgileSparks team based on our experience trying to help organizations make agile teams work in real life. It is heavily inspired or can even be called a revision of a post from a couple of years ago on the Lean/Kanban approach to teams. If you look at the Agile Manifesto, you can find "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams" Scrum, the most popular framework for implementing agile [...]

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Sensing and increasing manager engagement during an agile change initiative – guest post by Yaki Koren

By Yuval Yeret|2013-12-06T09:05:53-05:00December 6, 2013|Agile, Change Management, Guest Posts, kanban, Management|

Earlier this week I published a guest post about how managers need to change if they want agile to succeed by Yaki Koren. Some blog/twitter followers asked for elaboration and Yaki was gracious enough to comply. I suspect the fact that this is a really hot topic for him this week helped. Without further a due, here is Yaki with some explanations of what the coaching team in his organization does to sense and increase manager engagement in order to [...]

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The downsides of agile – guest post by Yaki Koren

By Yuval Yeret|2013-12-02T16:19:41-05:00December 2, 2013|Agile, Change Management, Guest Posts, Management|

This is a guest post by Yaki Koren who is the lead coach in one of AgileSparks's clients - Amdocs Delivery who are going through a very interesting transformation leveraging the Kanban Method, crossing the chasm techniques as well as several key agile practices. It is also where I spend a considerable slice of my time the last year trying to help make this happen. And now - here is Yaki... Last May I gave a talk at Agile [...]

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Starting with Managers Kanban (also called Product Stream Representative Kanban)

By Yuval Yeret|2012-09-20T12:07:34-04:00September 20, 2012|Blog, Change Management, kanban, Lean Startup for Change, Management|

The short version Based on experience helping organizations go agile in the last few years, an emerging attractor for healthier more sustainable results seems to be the "Starting with Managers" pattern. This is a "training wheels" pattern which seeks fastest learning of the managers in the organization what going towards an agile flow feels like and entails as well as the fastest learning as to whether that is an approach the organization wants to commit to and deploy. Basically all [...]

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Who would have thought Personal Kanban would end up being the counter-measure to stalled Kaizen / Continuous Improvement?
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Who would have thought Personal Kanban would end up being the counter-measure to stalled Kaizen / Continuous Improvement?

Blog, Change Management, Management, Personal Kanban

Who would have thought Personal Kanban would end up being the counter-measure to stalled Kaizen / Continuous Improvement?

By Yuval Yeret|2012-07-31T00:37:02-04:00July 31, 2012|Blog, Change Management, Management, Personal Kanban|

Paying attention to Management attention I've been talking recently about the challenges of keeping sustainable sticky Continuous Improvement programs. An aspect I've mentioned but not emphasized enough is the lack of management attention. In this blog post I will focus on why management attention is so important in improvement programs, why is it lacking and what might we do about it. Why we need management attention Basically to change the system of work you need the attention of people that [...]

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The Scrum Sprint Commitment/Forecast as an Expectation

By Yuval Yeret|2012-06-30T17:56:57-04:00June 30, 2012|Change Management, kanban, Management, Scrum|

Disclaimer - I'm a well-known Scrum Sprint Commitment basher. But in the last few weeks especially while processing the Lean Conference Boston Keynote by Steven Spear I have a fresh perspective I wanted to share. There is no improvement without learning One of Spear's key points was that there is no improvement without learning. There is no learning without surprises. There are no surprises without setting expectations. Specifically challenging expectations that will be missed occasionally. See a quote from one of [...]

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How does the performance objectives process change in a Lean/Agile world?

By Yuval Yeret|2012-01-26T14:37:29-05:00January 26, 2012|Agile, Management|

Seems like every January I get questions from HR leaders in organizations I'm working with that go something like this - "We are working on the yearly performance objectives process, and we were wondering whether it needs to change in an agile environment?" The main evolution I see in the Performance management process is leaning towards measuring up and across as well as focusing on capabilities improvement rather than a set of concrete product deliverables specified up front. Measuring up [...]

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“We are already Lean/Agile” – Really?

By Yuval Yeret|2012-01-20T20:34:33-05:00January 20, 2012|Agile, Change Management, Management|

These days more and more organizations think they are Agile A couple of years ago when you talked to people about agile a common response "why should we", "it won't work here", or "so this is the new fad? What will come next?" Times have changed. And a sign of the fact that agile is becoming more mainstream is that it being diluted and a common response these days is "but we are already agile!". I want to share a [...]

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The Toyota Kata – Book Review and Thoughts

By Yuval Yeret|2012-01-10T00:15:20-05:00January 10, 2012|Blog, Change Management, Management|

Followers of the blog might recall an early new year resolution to get more value from I read. Well the new year is with us, but this post is about returning debt from 2011. Toyota Kata is MY 2011 book of the year. It started me on a lot of thinking streaks and opened a lot of threads for how to effectively do my job as a Lean/Agile consultant. I have to say that many threads are still open. But [...]

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Management 3.0 unleashed upon the Israeli Agile Managers!

By Yuval Yeret|2011-06-21T22:42:46-04:00June 21, 2011|Management|

I had the pleasure to spend the last 2 days in Jurgen Appelo's Management 3.0 workshop that we organized. It was lots of fun, very interactive and thought out, and an experience I recommend to any manager trying to stay with the times, whether in an Agile environment or not. BTW Jurgen's materials are of such high quality of attention and design it makes you green with envy... I especially enjoyed exercises such as the Delegation Poker, Organization Design. The [...]

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Who would have thought Personal Kanban would end up being the counter-measure to stalled Kaizen / Continuous Improvement?

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