Digital Tools for Sprint Backlog

A while ago, I ran into a couple of posts written by Bas Vodde on the LeSS blog in January 2020: Digital tools considered harmful – Sprint Backlog (https://less.works/blog/2020/01/10/digital-tools-considered-harmful-sprint-backlog.html) Digital tools considered harmful – Jira (https://less.works/blog/2020/01/16/digital-tools-considered-harmful-jira.html) These posts were written just as COVID was beginning to explode worldwide, so while what is written in there … Leggi tutto

How to slowly destroy your organisation

  How to slowly destroy your organisation Here is a tip if you want to destroy your organisation: keep adding roles! I’ve seen it in many companies, and it is a typical slippery slope! Let’s discuss why and what the alternatives are. Back to the “beginning”: the agile team Think of a small company. Just … Leggi tutto

Laws, Sausages and Sprints

Update: I got some comments regarding this post that made me realise I was a victim of bias when writing it. It might seem I am arguing for an isolation of the developers. Absolutely not: anybody who heard me on the topic knows I am an advocate of direct communication between developers and stakeholders. This … Leggi tutto

Retrospectives: “Tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly”…

This is the third article in a mini-retrospectives series. In the previous ones I wrote about how retrospectives should be done at regular intervals, but also in other occasions and how the retrospective could be done in different groups than just the team. In this post I will continue to challenge the 12th principle of … Leggi tutto

“Scaling” the team – part one

No, this post is not about increasing the size of your development team, but about how to establish some measurements in your team – typically during the retrospectives, but not only – to support continuous improvement: let’s talk about Solution Focused Scales. I already discussed this technique in my Solution Focus presentation, but listening to … Leggi tutto

Agile mythology?

Last November I presented at the Deutsche Scrum the first version of my new presentation “Debunking Agile Myths”. The core message of the presentation was to show that many of the things we believe in the world of agile are based on… ehm… nothing, actually! Surprised? So was I when I started checking the scientific … Leggi tutto

Games for what?

I reckon on the subject of games I am at the border of the agile community: agile games are very spread among my colleague coaches, more than what I use them, and, from a purely informal and statistically not relevant poll I made, it seems that many agile coaches… run games with their teams on … Leggi tutto