Coach Dan's Blog

Before I say anything else - I sincerely hope that all of you, your families and friends are all healthy and safe.  I know that this is a trying time for folks for a lot of different reasons, and I'm going to repeat one of my most overused phrases - we all win together.  That means we can rely on each other to share the load, to work through the unexpected, and to help each other out in any way that we can.  Never forget that before anything else, we are teammates, and that means we take care of each other the best that we can.  Please be sure to monitor the  CDC Coronavirus page for updates and resources. All of the health and wellness related stress aside - what a better time to be agile?  It's like our shared values and principle s were custom designed for times just like this... "But Coach Dan!  Whatever do you mean?"  Well, I'm glad you asked! Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.  I can't think of a more important time...

I'm not going to lie - I'm super proud of (and very fond of) our agile marketers.  To a person these are some of the most customer focused, creative, passionate people I've ever had the pleasure of working with.  Every day I get a little smarter (not hard considering where I'm starting from) by observing and listening to them as they continually take steps forward as agile individuals and teams.   I recently asked a few of our agile marketers, managers and leaders - "what do you wish your manager / leader knew about agile (mindset OR framework) before started to work on (or with) an agile team?"  I got back so many amazing and powerful responses - I decided to summarize them and send them out to everyone!  So without further preamble or ado -  Agile is (and isn't)... Agile is a methodology as well as a mindset, the mindset to work in the environment is very important. Agile is about the team, where members need to be willing to learn and take on new re...

If you've been coached by me or any of the marketing coaches, you've no doubt heard us talk about the concept of the 3 Es - and why they create the feeling of speed.  The  3 Es  articulate a balance between execution, continuous improvement, and valuing individual interactions and individuals.  It can be easy for newer teams to over-index by focusing more on one particular “E” at the expense of the other two.  Healthy, growing and maturing agile teams  balance  all three of those Es every day, and while the Scrum Master is an important part of facilitating that balance - it's everyone's responsibility to ensure that all three are cared for!  Consider this... When talking about agile teams to “outsiders” (people outside of our core team) it’s easy to put an emphasis on  E ngagement , because, quite frankly, it really is an energizer!  But think about this, “Our highest priority is  to satisfy the customer .”  Sound familia...