I recently pointed a customer to a discussion around motivation when using Kanban compared to Scrum and other timebox-driven approaches. This blog post is a slightly edited version of my comments on that discussion, since I find myself getting into similar discussions quite frequently. The question/context originally posed by Victor on kanbandev was: “We kind of …
I’ve been following Craig Larman’s work for a while now. I find the books he wrote with Bas Vodde on scaling agile to be very insightful and actionable. I recently discovered Craig’s “Laws of Organizational Behavior”: 1. Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo middle- and first-level manager and “specialist” positions & …
I recently read Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help by Edgar Schein (actually I listened to it on Audible and then read it again on kindle to better process/digest). I can highly recommend it if you are interested in ways to become a more helpful consultant, manager, person – one who is able …
Once people start to get “Stop Starting Start Finishing” thinking (Kanban) or the “Focus on the current sprint” thinking (Scrum) a frequent question that comes up is how to deal with people who are required for different activities throughout the work life cycle. Some example scenarios: “I’m a tester who both participates in ATDD spec. …
Lean Kanban North America a.k.a Modern Management Methods conference for 2014 is coming up. This year it will take place in beautiful San Francisco. I love San Francisco and the conference hotel is smack in the area I love most – the waterfront… But I’m not sure how much time I will have to wander …
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 …
Yesterday I had an interesting session with a company who’s been a big believer in Lean Startup and the MVP concept but have lately reduced the amount of MVP-driven product development dramatically. Not because there is less uncertainty to iterate through but due to something we can call the “Lean Startup Blues” – the lack …
October is Lean Kanban conferences season in Europe. I chose to return to speak at Lean Kanban Central Europe (#LKCE12) taking place this year in lovely Vienna. If you are not aware of the conference or still contemplating whether to come, here are the things I’m especially looking forward to: Chance to hear the latest …
Warning: If my last postrattled your cage, let’s see how you like this one… This post is a thought experiment. This hasn’t been tried in the field, and might be the worst idea in the world. But at a minimum it might be a way to understand better Scrum and Kanban. Let me know what …
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 …