“The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.” – William Blake. In the modern world there are countless attributes that can be said to be quantitative measures of success.  Financial stability, relationships, quality friendships, material possessions and job satisfaction are just a few that spring to mind.  […]

“Find the autonomy in your work. Autonomy is key to feeling good about the work you do, no matter what kind of work it is.” – JEAN CHATZKY   We all talk about empowerment of our people and how that is an enabler for truly Agile ways of working. Have you ever stopped to consider […]

Everybody wants to be trusted and to trust those around them, right?    Trust is something that we all rely upon in our interpersonal relationships – but how many times have you heard a colleague say (or thought or said yourself), ‘I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them..’, about a co-worker […]

SoS! Save our Scrum! I don’t get infuriated often, I’m a pretty chilled chap, but the latest news about Scrum Alliance suing Scrum Inc over the use of the word ‘Licensed’ being synonymous with its trademarked ‘Certified’ course offering has made me incensed. So I’m going to have a rant. I don’t have a degree, […]

As a Scrum Master should you renew your Scrum Master certification? This question comes up a lot; whether it’s the CSM, PSM, LSM or SAFe Scrum Master and the answer is not a straight-forward yes or no. Like everything in software development – it’s more complex, and it really depends upon your own circumstances. I’ll […]

One of the most often misunderstood (and often skipped) parts of the PI process is that of Objectives writing. The bit people get wrong is knowing the difference between objectives and features. At best, teams resort to paraphrasing their features into business language. Having driven scaled agility across several organisations, the importance of PI objectives […]

“Whether your company is working in waterfall or agile, your testers will have the same basic skill-set and knowledge, the real difference is in their way of working.” Those testers who are used to working in an organisation that delivers projects in waterfall will be used to receiving a set of requirements early in the […]

PI Planning is at the very heart of any SAFe implementation. But do we really need it? Well, as Dean Leffingwell states: ‘If you aren’t conducting PI planning, you aren’t using SAFe’ so perhaps the more pertinent question is, do we need SAFe? Nowadays most organisations develop their software using Agile at the team level, however […]

1. The Risky Shift People put less effort in a) when they think other people in the group are putting in less effort, and b) when they think other people will work harder to accommodate. Members of small teams are less likely to think they can get away with shirking if they can’t find other […]