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Agile The Comprehensive Guide What is Agile? There's a new framework in town and it's called Agile. It's very simple, in fact there are only three roles and two ceremonies. Try it and let us know what you think! Agile Has 3 Roles Agile Has 2 Ceremonies Daily Status Update When : Every morning at 9AM Format The Boss receives a status report for each ticket on the group's board                                        e.g. "I made progress on this yesterday and will continue progress today" Anyone who has not yet spoken must now speak up and convince the Boss they are indeed doing work                                   e.g. "Though it is not represented on the board, I did work yesterday and will continue                   ...

  Purpose: Learn the art of prioritization Tools: If you are in a big room, each participant will need a pad of post-its and a wall on which to work. If you are virtual, have each participant use a designated “wall” on their section of the virtual board. You may have to be creative. Round One: Write down everything you did this morning between waking up and arriving at work, one activity per post-it. Also on each one write down the amount of time that activity took. EXAMPLE Add up the total amount of time – in this example, 110 minutes. So, in this example, let’s say your alarm went off this morning at 7:00 AM and you sat down at your desk ready to work at 8:50 AM. Round Two: You hit the snooze a couple of times this morning and didn’t get out of bed until 7:20 AM but you are still required to be sitting at your desk ready to work at 8:50 AM. Having lost 20 minutes, which post-its will you eliminate from your morning? You decide to forgo your shave (5-o-clock shadow is in style the...

courtesy of Dan Greenberg These are the Agile Rules as specified in the Agile Manifesto: 1. User Stories are required. Every user story must use the format As a _____, I want _____ so that ______. If it is not written in that format, the Agile police will arrest you. 2. Story Points. Must use the Fibonacci sequence. However, not the full Fibonacci sequence. You must use 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40 (note the deviation, for us math geeks, fibonacci would be 21, 34 instead of 20, 40, but Agile mandates the use of 20, 40). Every story must have a size on it in story points. We cannot overemphasize how important these numbers and metrics are. But oh no you better not talk about hours. You can secretly do some hours-to-points calculations in your head if you want (okay, this will take me about 3 days worth of work, that’s about 5 story points…) but if you say that out loud, you are NOT Agile and the Agile police will issue you a citation. 3. You must operate in Sprints. You must use 2-week Spr...

Legend has it that the first Model T salespeople working for Ford had a big challenge. When taking potential customers out for a test drive, instead of pushing the brakes to stop the car, they would often shout "WHOA!" as if trying to get their horse to respond to a verbal command. I think something analogous happens with Agilists as we try to help organizations benefit from Agile. Often, they hire us, are our "boss" (or at least client), and when they try to run an Agile transformation using their older way of thinking, it puts us in what I am calling the "Agilists Dilemma". If we go along with the command & control/waterfall approach, then we are in effect saying "whoa" to the car, but if we push against that and try to use an Agile approach, we risk being seen as insubordinate, or violating the rule "The customer is always right". In my 12 years or so as a coach, I have found this to be one of the more challenging ...

You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy. Then you should sit for an hour -Zen Proverb https://onbeing.org/blog/the-disease-of-being-busy