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General Colin Powell (former Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Army Brigadier General) recalled a story he heard the day he was promoted to brigadier general.  In the story, President Abraham Lincoln receives a message during the Civil War saying a Confederate detachment captured a brigadier general and 100 horses.  President Lincoln said out loud "Sure hate to lose those horses".   When asked about the brigadier general, he commented, "I can make a brigadier general in five minutes, but it's not easy to replace 100 horses." “What it says is it’s the horses that count, it’s the troops that count, it’s the seals that count, it’s the sailors that count,” Powell said.  "Communicate the vision and give them everything they need to be successful." Don't think that you are irreplaceable, none of us are.  Therefore, your number one priority each and every day should be taking an active role in development of your subor...

Another GREAT article from OrgMindset.com https://orgmindset.com/2017/11/03/climbing-the-bs-mountain-agile-for-the-sake-of-agile/

Thank you to Alex Yakyma from OrgMindset.com for this FANTASTIC article!  http://orgmindset.com/2017/11/28/anti-pattern-anemic-transformation/

Agile and Scrum are frameworks with a broad range of options but also some pretty hard guardrails . With the best of intentions, some will espouse their ideas/agenda as solid agile, but I'd recommend sticking to the core reliable sources , and look at anything outside of that circle with a critical eye to make sure they are sticking closely to the principles of Agility. To that end, here's a few reliable resources . Reliable Scrum Resources: Scrum Alliance:   www.scrumalliance.org (Mike Cohn - where the most recognized certifications (CSM, CSP, CTP, etc.) come from) Agile Manifesto:   www.agilemanifesto.org (Where it all started) Agile in a Nutshell One Pager:   http:// blog.crisp.se/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Agile-poster-2016-ver14.pdf Scrum Inc :   https://www.scruminc.com / (Jeff Sutherland co-inventor of Scrum) Version One:   https://www.versionone.com/ Rally:   https://www.ca.com/us/why-ca/about-us/acquisitions/rally-is-now-ca-techn...

If you have children (or if not, if you ever were a child ;-)), at one point in time you may have experienced a child that did not want to clean their room. One option as a parent/guardian is to educate the child on the benefits of a clean room.  Another is to offer inducements/incentives to motivate a child to clean their room.  However, in the end, without the threat of compulsion, education and inducements will only succeed some of the time with some of the people. According to the 'Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve' ( http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_rogers_innovation_adoption_curve.html ), 16% of the population will resist change strongly enough to be classified as "laggards". Laggards are defined as: "Traditional people, caring for the "old ways", are critical towards new ideas and will only accept it if the new idea has become mainstream or even tradition".    In Agile Transformation, if "laggards" are in a posit...

The Johari Window:  Knowns and Unknowns Made infamous by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield's " Unknown Unknown s" quote: " There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know..." Uhhh.... Do you know what he's talking about?? Sounds like a lot of gibberish, but it's actually very sound logic that's better explained using the " Johari Window ". One of the primary goals of agile is effective communication.  And a big part of achieving that is making sure information is 'de-siloed', or clearly spread ACROSS departments and 'silos' of organizations. Take a look a the graphic above with Four Quadrants:  Open, Hidden, Blind, Unknown. Open:  The upper left window "Open" (shaded in yellow) is where we wa...

Although the blog asking the question "How Mature is Project Management" was asked more than 4 months ago, I'm still receiving responses from impassioned Project Managers from around the world. Here's a sampling from the "LinkedIn" site, please feel free to add your comments as well. Until next time... Project Management is evolutionary. PM has been around since the ancient Egyptians built their pyramids. As time has progressed and we gained more tools (PERT, project scheduling software, etc.) what it takes to 'efficiently' practice/execute project management has evolved. So too, as the needs of the job have changed such as compliance and work place personnel issues (that Egyptian PM didn't need to deal with unions or counsel low performers on a documented improvement track). Being a 'well rounded' PM now includes a lot more than it used to. Just peruse the table of contents in the PMBOK. I believe that because our tools, techniques, and...