Agile Coaching – Connexxo GmbH | Agile Excellence

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

di Pierluigi Pugliese

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

di Pierluigi Pugliese

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

Agility and Organisational Complexity

di Pierluigi Pugliese

Many, many years ago Frederick Brooks wrote a seminal book called “The Mythical Man-Month”. (yes, I know the title is politically incorrect when seen with today’s eyes) While the best-known result of the book, also summarised in the title, is what is sometimes described as “we’ve never seen nine women join forces and have a … Leggi tutto

A conflict of interests

di Pierluigi Pugliese

It starts in the usual way: You’re having a discussion with somebody from your current client and he/she tells you that agile practice X is bogus/useless/… and that that person is not going to use it/apply it/promote it to others. Now… what do you do? Before you realise it, you are having a conflict of … Leggi tutto

Retrospectives: “Tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly”…

di Pierluigi Pugliese

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

On refactoring and the organisation

di Pierluigi Pugliese

I often get questions about how to approach refactoring at the cultural level, i.e. how to promote it in the organisation. This post is an adaptation of some advises I gave to a customer of mine… The best way is to have refactoring done as part of the story development, so during the sprint. It’s … Leggi tutto

“Scaling” the team – part two

di Pierluigi Pugliese

In the previous post I introduced you to Solution Focused scales and how they can be used in a one-to-one scenario. Now we’ll extend this to a team context, but first, here are some tips… Tips on using scales A constructivistic approach is important also when using scales: whatever numbers the client chooses, it must … Leggi tutto

“Scaling” the team – part one

di Pierluigi Pugliese

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

There is no resistance in coaching

di Pierluigi Pugliese

One of the concepts I hear many colleague agile coaches talking about is the concept of “resistance” of the client. Typical sentences are “he is resisting the agile transition” or “I talked to her about X and she resisted the proposals I made”. Now here’s one thing that is important to consider: there is no … Leggi tutto

The best way to coach a team is…

di Pierluigi Pugliese

…to coach its individuals one-to-one! Contradiction? Well, some time ago I thought so as well, but… Over the last years I had a few clients where, because of some constraints in the setting I was working with, I needed to “speed up” with the coaching program and “deliver” a high-performance team faster than I usually … Leggi tutto

Agile mythology?

di Pierluigi Pugliese

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

Motivation: cause or effect?

di Pierluigi Pugliese

In a conversation during the last agile coach camp Germany I was reminded of something I see often in agility: motivational interventions. Most, if not all, agile coaches use them in one form or another: a workshop moderated with a pot of energy on their side, a training where the reasons why agile is what … Leggi tutto

A matter of secondary gains

di Pierluigi Pugliese

So you explained to your team how to do X – where X is a certain agile practice you believe it will be very helpful for them – and they learned and implemented it quite well and you were so proud of the way you convinced them to change their habits until… they don’t! And … Leggi tutto

Games for what?

di Pierluigi Pugliese

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