True story - I once did some consulting at a Fortune 50 company where the SAFe transformation success was measured by "number of ARTs launched". You can guess what happened... Fake Agile Release Trains (FARTs). Entire VP and Director organizations were now calling themselves an "Agile Release Train" and going through the motions of a cadenced PI Planning event. When I asked one of the [...]
Leaders and Executives considering a “scaled Agile transformation” – you have a choice. You can fall in line with the masses and install a scaling framework such as SAFe. Alternatively, you can take a much more targeted approach, one that addresses your needs specifically, and that actually simplifies (de-scales) product development. SAFe vs. Simple Scaling. Let’s compare these two approaches in an attempt to outfit [...]
Here I make the case for installing SAFe as-is. Note: Be sure and read to the end! The Case for Installing SAFe As-Is Installing SAFe as-is is appropriate when you have all of these situations: We need to “scale Agile up” to levels higher than Team-level Each team needs consistency of using ScrumXP or Kanban XP practices are needed to improve the quality of the [...]
As an Agile coaching community, we have gone astray. We have become obsessed with installing frameworks. We lead with frameworks instead of empathy. I'm not preaching, I'm guilty as charged. Now is the time for a great reset within the Agile coaching community. We need to stop leading with framework installations (SAFe, Scrum, LeSS, Kanban, etc.) and get back to the basics of Agile. Ivar [...]
Framework installation vs custom Agile ecosystem - which is better? When we install a framework (Scrum, SAFe, LeSS, DAD, Kanban, etc.) without understanding what the team/organization truly needs, we are creating what Lean calls muda. Muda is waste. Muda in the form of unnecessary meetings, redundant practices, solving non-problems, additional low-value artifacts, new role confusion, change fatigue, ... the list goes on and on. [...]
Ever wonder what the “Young Frankenstein” movie has in common with Agile transformations? Me neither. Until now. While channel surfing recently, I ran into the great Mel Brook’s classic movie. It still holds up today. In summary, some Agile transformations have an “abby normal” brain. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain... Situation - the Abby Normal Brain Dr. Frankenstein’s dimwitted assistant, Igor (pronounced [...]
Simple Agile scaling - is it an impossible dream? As humans, we have a natural propensity to over-complicate things. Growing up, I always enjoyed looking closely at Rube Goldberg cartoons to see the incredible convoluted solutions he would come up with to do the simplest of tasks. For example, this Goldberg invention for squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush requiring 16 convoluted steps from A to P: [...]
How to achieve Daily Standup greatness? Let’s start with how not to! “Yesterday I …, today I …, no impediments.” These are the infamous 3 questions associated with the Daily Standup (also called Daily Scrum). Using this format for your Daily Standups is a guaranteed way to ensure this event sounds like a verbal status report, is boring, and is considered wasteful by the team [...]
A pervasive anti-pattern in many companies is Team-level backlogs replete with technical tasks. Not a single real User Story in sight. This is what I call “Tasks masquerading as User Stories”. There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t know where to begin! I’ve heard it all and seen it all. “We write technical stories.” “We’re different – we just capture what [...]
As Agilists, we preach “We want empowered teams!” But we turn right around and tell the teams to use the Scrum (or Kanban) framework. Why? Because we require corporate-wide Agile approach consistency, and we want to make it easier for when people transfer into a new team. Stop for a moment and realize how utterly stifling this position is to team empowerment. In many ways, [...]