Featured Resources
The Humanizing Work Guide to Splitting User Stories
The definitive source for how to split features and user stories well. Consolidated and updated from almost 15 years of Richard and Peter’s writing and teaching on the topic.
Agile CPG Innovation: Pharmavite case study
Agile applies well beyond software development. This case study describes how an Agile way of working transformed innovation for a leading vitamin and supplement company.
Book: Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber
Learn how your software team can collaborate more effectively to build higher-quality products in a fast, human-friendly way. Many people think of BDD as a software testing approach. Richard’s book shows how BDD is really a whole-team collaboration practice, with automated tests as a nice side-effect.
The Three Jobs of Agile Management
Management doesn’t go away in an agile organization, but they do refocus. Learn about the three jobs of agile management, the two lenses on each job, and the focus areas for growth.
Resources by Topic
Product Ownership & Backlog Management
- The Humanizing Work Guide to Splitting User Stories
- Three Categories of Infrastructure Work (and why you don’t need it all right now)
- Growing DONE—How to Make the Definition of Done Work for Your Team
- MMFs: What they are and why they matter
- Prioritization Heuristics
Agile Fundamentals
- Why Scrum works when it works
- Effective Sprint Planning
- How To Have a More Effective Daily Scrum Tomorrow
- Effective Sprint Reviews
- Two Key Moves for Better Sprint Retrospectives
- How to Give a Great Sprint Demo
- Why Longer Sprints Probably Won’t Help
- What You Need to Know About Cynefin
- The Magic of 1-Day Sprints
- HW Show S2E5: How tools like XP & Scrum create effective teams
- Ask Humanizing Work: Long-running Stories
- Org Structure, Software Architecture, and Cross-functional Teams
- Functional Managers in Agile
- We’re agile, so what do managers even do now?
Leadership & Management
- Turn The Ship Around – A View Into Agile Leadership
- Functional Managers in Agile
- We’re agile, so what do managers even do now?
Teams
- The Magic of 1-Day Sprints
- HW Show S2E1: Most Great Work Happens in Teams
- HW Show S2E2: Jazz, Teams, and Work
- HW Show S2E3: What Kills Great Teams, and What Can You Do About It?
- HW Show S2E4: Adobe Audition Team Reunion – What makes a great team great?
- HW Show S2E5: How Tools Like Scrum and XP Help Create Real Teams
Facilitation
- Behind the Scenes of a 50-Person Remote Retro
- Facilitation Case-Study: Remembering the Future Together
- Our Favorite End-of-Year Retro Format
- Great Facilitators Accomplish These 6 Goals
- Framing a Meeting Right
- How to Get the Quiet Ones to Engage
- Review Agenda
- How to Give Clear Instructions When Facilitating
- Talking About Our Feelings—Potentially Awkward, Definitely Important
- Ask Humanizing Work: When the Observation Part of Focused Conversation Gets Boring
- 80/20 Facilitation (or, all the study on facilitation most people need)
Agile Outside Work
- Lessons from 14 Years of Agile Homeschooling for Families Suddenly in the Middle of It
- How We Use Agile at Home
- Agile Homeschool
- Agile Homeschool Update
Training, Coaching & Skill Development
- On the Value of Product Owner Training
- Why a Prerequisite Course?
- Coaching Surgeons, Cyclists, and Software Teams
- Why Simulations in Training?
- Coaching Stereotypes & Realities
Weekly Newsletters (Subscribe in footer!)
- Breaking Free from the Delegation Trap
- “This Worked For My Last Team” (And Why That’s Not Enough)
- The Hidden Leverage of Great Product Management
- The Return of Pragmatic Agile: Coming Full Circle
- The Secret to Making Facilitation Skills Feel Natural
- Spreadsheet Problems
- The 4-Step Roadblock Buster
- The 3 Essential Levels of Planning
- Perception ISN’T Reality, But…
- Why Is Prioritization So Hard?
- 3 Essential Skills for Engineering Managers
- 5 Common Mistakes When Answering Questions Under Pressure (And How to Avoid Them)
View our Key Ideas of the Week archives here.
The Humanizing Work Show
- Annual Planning That Actually Works
- Are Product Owners & Product Managers the same thing?
- How to Make a Team Faster (Without Burning Out)
- How to Manage Deadlines in Agile
- Kevin Goldsmith
- Behind the Scenes of a 50-Person Remote Retro
- Decision-Making in Consensus Cultures
- What Businesses Can Learn From Jazz
- But We Must Management
- The Art of Focused Conversation
- Cross-Team Coordination
- To Plan or Not to Plan?
- When Purpose and Strategy Don’t Matter
- Projects Shouldn’t Start Green, They Should Earn It
- Giving Great Answers to On-The-Spot Questions
- Daily Scrum Taking Too Long?
- Agile’s Three Tribes: People, Performance, and Process
- Setting Team Goals: 5 Tips for Getting it Right
- The Fishbowl & the Psychological Costs of Agile
- Leadership Communication Strategies
- How to Launch a Highly Effective Leadership Team
- 5 Lessons from Music to Help You Succeed at Work
- Why You Should Amplify Your Amundsens and Dampen Your Shackletons
- The Duck Canopy Incident & Its Unexpected Lessons for Work
- Why Agile Jobs Are Vanishing, and What to Do About It
Check out all show episodes here.