I have a problem.  It’s quite serious and it affects me everyday.  I can’t seem to watch a TV programme without trying to find some (usually tenuous) way to connect it to product delivery and Agile.   It’s an illness; I can’t stop.   I’m not just ruining my own life, it’s spreading to my loved ones.   My wife recently yelled at a team on Australian MasterChef: “Why don’t they test one fully made burger first? That’s Agile!” (*I guess this means she can’t leave me now) I don’

Your organisation can’t move faster than your leadership’s ability to focus. While most execs chase headcount, tools, or structure, the real constraint is attention. This article explores why executive focus - not effort - is the hidden bottleneck in enterprise transformation, and how to reclaim it as your organisation’s most strategic asset.

Why speed, structure, and customer obsession are the new currency of value. Which direction is your Organisation heading? Why This Article Matters If your organisation can’t pivot quickly, your competitors will - and when they do, they’ll win. It’s not a scare tactic. It’s the reality facing any executive trying to deliver value through slow, static, project-led ways of working. The world isn’t waiting. Neither should you. The Imperative of Product Transformation Let’s not su

In today’s enterprises, delivery often looks busy but achieves little. Delivery Theatre explores the illusion of progress created by rehearsed rituals, vanity metrics, and agile-by-numbers. From Jira-driven busyness to transformation-by-slide-deck, this article unpacks why organisations confuse activity with outcomes—and how to break free from performative delivery to focus on real customer value, measurable impact, and strategic alignment.

I’ve written my thoughts previously on why I hate daily stand-ups. Not because they can’t be valuable, but because they almost never are. As a former professional athlete, I’ve always been obsessed with what makes teams perform at their best - both on the pitch and in the boardroom. Even though my playing days are behind me, that drive for peak performance fuels the way I support corporate teams and help build products that excel under pressure. I’m constantly drawn to the b

How the Scrum Master role is evolving in the modern enterprise and how your organisation can be first mover to take advantage

Are you imagining "What can be, unburdened by what has been"? Or are the margins “Too Big to Rig.” Whichever side of the fence you are on, the winner of today’s election will be the team that has best aligned their activities with their strategic goals. In 2012 for Obama’s re-election campaign, his team used a data-driven approach to set clear objectives and measures to track progress against them. Increasing younger voter turnout was one such objective, and the measures incl

Over the past twenty years the corporate world has seen significant change influenced by digital technology which has revolutionised the way that companies operate. Globalisation has led to increased complexity navigating different markets, each with their own regulatory environments and cultural values, and the pace of external, societal change has led to challenges predicting future trends. Companies have access to more data than ever before, but whilst access has increased

Jira, love it or hate it? Either way, for a lot of organisations it’s necessary; it’s the main tool that development teams use to (1) track their work and for (2) stakeholders to understand whether the company is delivering the right value. If your company is doing both of those things, in a way that’s not burdensome to the teams  - and - in a way that is both simple for stakeholders, then you don’t need to read this article. Rate yourself using the Jira20  below and see what

Turns out guacamole is the answer. I’m not entirely sure what the question is (on a side note, I just found out there is a new Douglas Adams book called 42 that comprises a treasure trove of his unreleased personal stash of notebooks, letters and scripts) Anyhoo, Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so, so let’s move on. If guacamole is the answer, the question is, obviously, “why - in Agile - do we only improve only one thing at a time. Take Scrum retrospectives, for i

Scrum Masters eh? Do they ever think about what comes next? I don't mean in terms of work, but for yourselves. How long have you been a Scrum Master? More than five years? What comes after Scrum Master? Have you planned for your next step? Are you ready? As a seasoned Scrum Master, you’ve honed your skills, navigated sprint cycles, and facilitated countless ceremonies. But what lies beyond the Scrum board? How can you elevate your impact and propel your career forward?

Clearly from those that have to do it or manage it, the answer is a resounding yes. Is it that clear-cut? Of course not. So let's delve into it, by firstly asking why firms want it. There are a few reasons to want staff time tracking, we’re going to focus on delivery teams but fundamentally the issues are the same: 1. A lack of trust - Management wants a good idea of who’s doing what and is time being spent effectively. Are people doing what they should be?  To be honest if

We set Sales teams quota targets, but we don’t tell them they need to close a specific deal on a specific day. We ask marketing teams to commit to driving a certain number of leads within a specific time period, but we don’t tell them that a particular campaign needs to drive those leads. And yet, we ask our product development teams to deliver specific features by specific dates and produce roadmaps of features to give the comfort of ‘certainty’. Feature roadmaps set the wr

I was reading an article the other day from one of the big consultancy firms about organisational culture and why cultural change efforts fail. Honours degrees get you the prestige, but they don’t buy the experience: I swear these big consultancies haven’t ever been on the ground in the workplace because a lot of what is said is nonsense. Their number 1 reason why cultural change fails was “Leaders lack commitment”. I hear similar comments from the agile community when I ask

In my consultancy work I use sporting analogies a lot. My hero growing up was Andre Agassi, and he once said that every tennis match is a life in miniature. Sport mirrors our human experience – the drama of the game, the unpredictable outcomes, the highs and lows of emotion, the winning, the losing. I spent last weekend following the Ryder Cup and as I watched the European team lift the golden chalice for the ninth time since I became a covert of this event in 1997, I realise

Here’s a stat for you: 5% of employees are aware of and/or understand their company’s strategy. Or an even better one: 71% of employees cannot recognise their own company’s strategy from a multiple choice list. (these stats are from the Harvard Business Review btw) And I think it’s a problem. A big problem. When confronted with the question “what is your strategy?”, most CEOs retaliate with a Powerpoint slide deck full of animations, colours and charts - we’ve seen some nic

Many of the organisations agilicist are drafted into have already been through an “agile transformation”. But they aren’t “transformed”. Let me tell you a story. Probably 80% of our clients have been through these big transformations already. Usually they have been led by one of the very large, and very famous consulting groups who sell with the A-Team and deliver with the D-Team (at A-Team prices). These consultancies know all the theory, they say all the right things; The

Agilicist have been parachuted into a multitude of organisations to fix issues they’ve had working with geographically distributed teams. So what does it take to make offshore development a success? Even before the pandemic, moving development offshore was becoming common-place. There are lots of reasons for this, but often it’s due to perceived cost. They look at the rate card of a supplier and think, we can save £X by moving our entire development function over to India, M

FACT: Higher Trust = Higher Productivity and more engagement. But how do you create a culture of trust in your organisation? ..... I was reading some research the other day that people at high-trust companies report 50% higher productivity and 76% more engagement than those at low-trust companies. According to Harvard researcher Paul J. Zak, there are 8 strategies to drive that trust culture but I wanted to talk about one in particular. I remember a number of years ago Agilic

“The teams aren’t productive enough!” At Agilicist , we hear this a lot from senior management. And usually it’s because of one of these 3 things: Insufficient Clarity Teams need a clear understanding of what they are doing, and why they are doing it. If they don’t have that, they get distracted by low priority work, they duplicate effort, things fall through the cracks and there is confusion which results in delays, waste and a hard time achieving goals. If your teams are re