Collaborate vs. Coordinate

“Our team needs to collaborate more.” “We need to have tight coordination on this effort.” How are these two different? While collaboration and coordination are… Read More

The 15 minutes that reveal the health of your team

How do you assess the health of a team? You could conduct surveys and interviews of team members and stakeholders. You could look at the results the team produces. You could watch them work for a week or two. Or, as Peter & Richard explain in this Humanizing Work Show episode, you could just observe a team’s Daily Scrum (aka Daily Standup) and learn 80% of what you need to know about health of a team. Read More

Archetypes of Product Ownership Gone Wrong

When the Product Owner role is going well, it’s super high-leverage. A good PO sets up a whole team to do more meaningful, valuable work. Read More

How does my work as a developer change in Scrum?

In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “Our team is adopting Scrum, how does my role (as a developer) change?” Obviously, you’ll be doing Scrum now and you weren’t before, but beyond the obvious, there are three big ways you can expect your work to change. Read More

Why Doing Scrum Well Is Not Really About Doing Scrum Well

One sense of “doing Scrum well” is following the process, following the rules. Do you have the 3 Scrum roles clearly defined? Do you do… Read More

How much of Scrum should be standardized across teams?

In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “How much should we standardize across our organization? Is it important that our sprint lengths match, that we estimate the same way, that we use the same tools, that we report the same metrics, etc.?” Obviously, standardizing everything isn’t going to work, but neither will standardizing nothing. So, where do you draw the line? Read More

What do I focus on as a new Product Owner?

In this episode, Richard answers the question: “What should I focus on as a new Product Owner?” Being a Scrum Product Owner is a big job, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed, so Richard breaks down what’s most important to focus on in the early days and in what sequence. Read More

When You Can’t Do It By The Book

Last week, we were facilitating a large Agile for Teams workshop to launch several teams in a marketing organization. Some participants were skeptical, especially early… Read More

Habits and Strategies

As one teacher of philosophy summarized Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” The best Agile teams… Read More

What do I focus on as a new ScrumMaster?

In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “What should I focus on as a new ScrumMaster?” They explain why focusing on making your team do Scrum well is tempting but a dead end and what you should focus on instead. Read More