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
- 80/20 Facilitation (or, all the study on facilitation most people need)
- Ask Humanizing Work: When the Observation Part of Focused Conversation Gets Boring
- Talking About Our Feelings—Potentially Awkward, Definitely Important
- Making Info Visible for Better Decisions
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
The Humanizing Work Show
- These Six Things Improve How Teams Work
- The Secret to Easier Prioritization
- Two Key Moves for Better Sprint Retrospectives
- Effective Sprint Reviews
- How To Have a More Effective Daily Scrum Tomorrow
- Effective Sprint Planning
- Why Scrum works when it works
- The Three Jobs of Management (HW Show)
- Dealing with “technical stories”
- The Healthy Way To Do Commitments & Accountability
- Mark Ethier, founder of iZotope
- Making & Communicating Decisions in Uncertainty with the 3ID Pattern
- Melissa Boggs: Changing the Rules for Work
- The Surgeon General Has Something to Say About Humanizing Work
- Measuring the Success of Agile Adoption
- Couch to Running 45 Miles Across the Grand Canyon
- Humanizing Work 2022 Conference Participant Takeaways
- Agile CPG Innovation with Vivian Rhoads
- PO Board Overview
- Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions
- Five Lessons in Career Development
- Do we really need a retrospective every sprint?
- Having Uncomfortable Conversations on a Team
- Why the Effort to Humanize Work Is Worth It
- A Breakthrough in Hiring with TheraSpecs
- Should you make a “User Manual for Me”?
- Does Everything in our Backlog Need to be a User Story?
- What’s Wrong with the 5 Whys
- Overcoming Resistance to Change
- What Many Leaders Get Wrong When Trying to Build Team Engagement
- Why we don’t like epics
- The Peter Principle & Management
- What’s the right size for an agile team?
- Nicole Forsythe on Career Transitions, Agile Coaching, and Antarctic Exploration
- Grilling next week’s chicken (or how to get people to work outside their specialty)
- Humanizing Work at the WTPO Conference in Africa
- Laloux Culture Model (2022 Update)
- User Story Fatigue
- When People Don’t Participate In Retros
- How To Get Useful Feedback
- Complexity and Cross-Geo Teams
- Humanizing Work Snapshot: Prioritizing for the Day
- Handling Unrealistic Deadlines
- March 2022 Community of Practice Recap
- Luke Hohmann on Figure Skating, Innovation Games, and Participatory Budgeting
- How Do You Decide What Goes on a Management Backlog?
- Picking A Pilot Team for Agile Adoption
- Richard Lawrence and Leslie Brooks on Adopting Behavior-Driven Development
- Season 2 Episode 5: How Tools Like Scrum and XP Help Create Real Teams
- Season 2 Episode 4: Adobe Audition Team Reunion
- Season 2 Episode 3: What Kills Great Teams, and What Can You Do About It?
- Season 2 Episode 2: Jazz, Teams, and Work
- Season 2 Episode 1: Most Great Work Happens in Teams
- Season 1 Episode 5: Why Humanizing Work Is Emerging Now
- Season 1 Episode 4: The Importance of Personal Growth
- Season 1 Episode 3: Creating Motivation at Work
- Season 1 Episode 2: The Relationship (or Conflict) Between Ease and Meaning at Work
- Season 1 Episode 1: What is Humanizing Work?