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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                                                   to  do work today." The Meeting Facilitator ensures that a status is given for every ticket on the board and that every person in the group has adequately proven that they are working      2. Every-Other

  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 these d

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

In the internet age, we love to use memes with quotes. But the quote is only as good as the truth contained within it and the authority/knowledge/wisdom of the person being quoted. So who is "Rear Admiral Grace Hopper". Here's some highlights of her resume/life/qualifications: 1. Born in 1906 (14 years before women were allowed to vote in the US) 2. Earned a PhD in math at Yale and taught at Vassar 3. Is often credited with creating the term 'computer bug' because literally, one of the punch cards in her computer stack failed due to a 'bug' that had died on the card, causing a misread. 4. Was one of the original creators of the COBOL language 5. Became the first female Admiral in the US Navy. This person, driven by logic, math and computer programming, working in one of the most structured and mission critical organizations in the world, the US Navy, said that doing the same things we have always done just because we have always done it that wa

As highlighted in this Harvard Business Review, something discussed in Malcom Gladwell's book "Outliers" is that in certain cultures (he speaks of country culture), disasters often happen because of a rigid heirarchical structure that prevents (out of fear) a subordinate from correcting or directly and honestly directing someone who out ranks them, with often disasterous results. In one example, a first officer on a Korean Air Lines plane tried to, politely tell the captain they were about to crash into a side of a mountain, but was so afraid and trained by his culture, that he did not dare. (source: https://www.reservations.com/blog/resources/power-distance-index/) This often happens with challenged/failed Agile Transformations. Google did some groundbreaking research several years ago and found the ONLY common thread for their best teams was "psychological safety" the idea that team members could mention anything to anyone regardless of rank, without f