agile

Scrum team high-fiving after their daily standup 4 Tips to Refocus Stale Standups

The daily standup is supposed to get everyone on the same page and make teams more productive and efficient. But it’s easy for this short meeting to become stale and stop providing any real benefit. Here are four ways to get out of the slump of merely delivering status updates and re-energize your daily standups.

Cristy Bird's picture
Cristy Bird
Team member pointing a finger to blame someone Is Your Culture about Responsibility or Blame?

When things go wrong, it can be helpful to understand what happened and who was involved. However, all too often organizations (and the managers within) confuse responsibility with assigning blame. The former is essential for improvement. The latter works against an effective, collaborative, productive culture.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Neon sign saying "People fail forward to success" Lessons Learned from Product Failures

Being agile is all about learning from failures and building on experiences. This applies to not just individuals, but even to large organizations. The key is being transparent and objective in accepting and understanding failures, and taking away lessons for future actions and decisions. Just keep innovating.

Bharathan Venkateswaran's picture
Bharathan Venka...
Team member coaching her senior manager in agile practices Coaching Senior Management to Be Agile

Embracing an agile mindset isn’t always easy, and it can be especially difficult for senior managers who spent most of their careers working in more traditional development methodologies. By trying to speak the same language and demonstrating successful self-organization, teams can help senior management become agile.

Owen Gotimer's picture
Owen Gotimer
Person stacking rocks to build a foundation Building Good Scrum Habits

Building good habits is an important part of an effective Scrum team. Habits are a form of automation: The more basic processes we can automate, the more we can focus our energy on hard things. The Scrum process, with its focus on rituals, helps us by providing a framework for collaboration and making it second nature.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Airplane taking off Tips for Getting an Agile Transformation Off the Ground

Many agile transformations are doomed before they even begin. Organizations focus on the wrong things up front, resulting in a poorly planned effort that doesn’t deliver business value. Here are some tips to get things started the right way, including how to communicate well, define roles, and change your culture.

Jeffery Payne's picture
Jeffery Payne
Yellow and gray rulers Rethinking Your Measurement and Metrics for Agile and DevOps

In their transition to agile and DevOps, many teams forget they also need to update their measurement and metrics plan. Some measurements and metrics from the traditional waterfall software development lifecycle may remain useful, but many may not provide value—and some may even adversely impact progress toward goals.

Michael Sowers's picture
Michael Sowers
Scrum team member talking during daily standup Supporting Scrum: Adopt before You Adapt

Scrum is a fairly minimal agile process framework that you can adapt to work best for your team. But adaptation works best once the team has internalized the principles and values of the Scrum process, and that takes practice. In other words: Before you start to adapt Scrum, first try fully adopting the framework.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk