Coach Dan's Blog

There's been something that's been on my mind lately, and I can't quite get my head wrapped around an answer. I figured at this point, instead of just puzzling over it - the best thing I can do is just ask y'all what you think. So here goes... What's stopping you? Seriously, what's stopping you? We've been working on this "agile thing" now for quite some time. People have been trained on the mindset. PowerPoint decks, and playbooks have been distributed. Workshops have been conducted. Scrum and Kanban has been installed. Teams have been formed and registered them in a database. Jira and confluence have been rolled out. Dashboards full of metrics have been published. That means we're agile, right? Maybe, I guess. But for those of you who have started your agile team journey together, let me ask you this... do you feel agile? Does it feel like you are closely connected to the customer and business problems that you're helping to so...

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  Fair  warning - Coach Dan is feisty today! Wherever I get in front of a group of people who are newer to the concept of agile and agility, I like to ask them what they think agile is all about.  The responses I get are pretty predictable... "Agile is about going faster."   "Agile makes teams more efficient."   "Agile is about speed."   Agile is about sprints."  "Agile is about being flexible."  "Agile is about Metrics." I very rarely, if ever hear someone suggest,  "agile is a way of reorganizing our teams around delivering customer value, rather than around artificial organizational boundaries."   I hardly ever hear someone say,  "Agile means empowering teams to self-organize around the work that they are doing to drive value, rather than organizing around job title."   And I never hear people say, "Agile means teams can decide to improve the way they work together, becoming more  effective, eff...

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Hello agile teammates!  Can I get real with you for a minute?  I want to share something that really gets my dander up...  I don't know about you, but when I hear folks refer to our agile team events as "meetings" I get a special kind of cranky!  Let me explain...   As you all are very aware of by now, agile teams are built around a set of shared values and principles we call " the agile mindset ."  The first shared value of that mindset is: Individuals and interactions  over process and tools Now - tools and processes are valuable... they really help a team stay focused on their shared objectives (which of course is to deliver values for our customers while we achieve business outcomes!)  This may be an unpopular opinion, but I'll make the argument anyway - Agile team events are not a process, nor are they a step in a process.  They are not a box to be checked or a form to be stamped.  They are an  opportunity  for a cross-fun...

This agile coach was investing some time in himself this weekend and came across an article that warned of a topic he is aware of, and indeed himself has experienced- Zombie Agility!   Now I know what you're thinking - "He's really off into the deep end this time," but hear me out!  I can assure you, it's a real thing - you may have seen the symptoms of this horrible affliction before - Agile teams that are joyless and robotic - executing the events without really ever really connecting with the work (or talking about their customer) All of the boxes are checked and you're "doing" Agile - but not really seeing the business results Backlogs are still highly dependent on command and control approvals (you're still asking your Advisory Council for approval to move forward) Outside dependencies that cause constant reshuffling of team's priorities Teams are getting lackluster results and have disengaged people As Eric Cottrell  puts it -  Zombie ...

Every single one of you reading this post is at a different stage in your agile journey.  Some of you have been on agile teams for a year or more.  Some of you are about to start with a new team.  Some of you bring learnings from other places.  Some of you are just taking your first steps toward embracing and living the agile values and principles.  I think the fact that we're all in a different place, and looking at things with different lenses is  AWESOME ! With all of this perspective - we truly have the opportunity to work together to help our company become a more agile place.  If you've got a  few years of learning  under your belt - how can you incorporate YOUR learning into our agile teams, and to support our agile managers? If you've been into this journey for  about a year  - what can you share with your agile manager and your peers about what you've learned? If you are  new(er) to all of this  - ...