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Why a Prerequisite Course?

Participants in our courses are sometimes surprised to find out that they have work to do in advance of the course. Most of our live, interactive courses involve a self-guided, online prerequisite course. Here’s why. Read More

On the Value of Product Owner Training

I love teaching Product Owner classes because the PO is in such a high-leverage role. The PO's work affects the work of 7, 9, maybe even 18 other people. And it's not difficult to triple the value delivered by a Scrum team, simply by improving their PO's skills in a few key ways. Let's look at the financial impact of that change... Read More

MMFs: What they are and why they matter

Suppose you have a headache. A bad headache. "I'll take Tylenol to make it go away," you think. So, you grab the Tylenol bottle and see that the directions indicate taking two pills. Would you take 20 pills in an attempt to make your headache go away 10 times faster? Read More

Agile Homeschool Update

Last year, I wrote about how we use an agile approach for homeschool. Since then, we've refined our approach. This school year, we updated our board to reflect some of those changes. Read More

3 Ways to Handle End-of-the-Year Holidays on Your Agile Team

The period from mid-December to early-January can be disruptive for an agile team. You're used to working on a regular cadence, maybe in 2-week iterations. Suddenly, there's an avalanche of company holidays and vacation time that throws off your velocity and cadence. Here are 3 ways you can make the end of the year a useful and productive time rather than a few weeks of frustration and waste. Read More

Focusing on the Right Things in Your Daily Scrum

"Yesterday, I was in Sprint Planning..." I hear it once, and I'm suspicious. By the time the third team member says this, it's clear the Daily Scrum I'm observing is broken. Everyone in the room knows we did planning yesterday—we were all there. It's not valuable content to help the team plan its day. Too many Daily Scrums are a waste of time. It's not always this blatant, but if everyone knows what they're going to say in advance of the meeting and nothing changes as a result of the meeting, that team is probably missing the point. So, what is the point? Read More