Agile transformation, undoubtedly two words that strike fear into the heart of any product organization.  It should be an exciting time, with tough conversations, compromises, and hopefully good progress. But even if you successfully form a single team, there’s another problem… the rest of the organization has no idea how to deal with you. There...

Many teams have at least a moderate ability to plan and control their time. They’re able to say, “We will work on these things over the coming sprint,” and have a somewhat reasonable expectation of that being the case. And that’s the type of team we encounter in much of the Scrum literature–the literature that...

…you are ready to embark on a Sprint, and you are planning it in Sprint Planning. The objective of a Sprint is to deliver value to the stakeholders. However, simply following a list of Sprint Backlog Items (SBIs; e.g., tasks) does not necessarily result in the creation of the greatest value possible. Because the team lays out its work plan...

I had an interesting incident while working with one of the organizations. One of the project managers was very happy the way his team was performing. When he came to me, he said, “My team is doing really good these days. They started with a lot of features in gone few sprints and their estimates...

I’ve worked with MBOs a.k.a. Management By Objectives on and off at a variety of places. Your manager (and presumably their manager) define a set of quantifiable (S.M.A.R.T.) objectives for you to hit in the coming quarter. Then you review them at the end of the quarter. Easy, right? I must be treating these things...

One of my favorite quotes comes from the great entrepreneur Henry Ford Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. The story of one my failures dates back to year 2007. I was working with one of the Fortune 500 companies. I was stationed in Osaka, Japan and leading an ERP...