General Archives - Agile Authority

Reinvigorate Your SAFe Transformation with a Product Operating Model Concept

Many SAFe transformations stall or fail to deliver the promised benefit of business agility. One prominent reason for these failures is SAFe’s insistence on using the Feature Factory approach. Let's reinvigorate your SAFe transformation with a Product Operating Model concept. The Dreaded Feature Factory A Feature Factory is where someone other than the Agile development team defines what to do. For example, SAFe describes the [...]

Agile Authority2026-01-15T00:24:45+00:00Categories: General, SAFe, Team Greatness, Transformation|

Stop the Madness – Technical Tasks as Backlog Items

Stop the madness! In my 20+ years of coaching Agile Teams and orgs, this is one of the most pervasive and disheartening aspects I have seen. The Pervasive Situation Take a good look at your Team backlogs. Chances are they are replete with technical tasks. The work item name typically gives it away – “Implement the ABC method”, “Code the retry API”, “Insert the new [...]

Agile Authority2025-12-03T15:47:30+00:00Categories: General, Team Greatness|

Leveraging AI in the Product Operating Model: Accelerating Discovery and Delivery

In today's fast-paced product development landscape, the Product Operating Model (POM) emphasizes close collaboration between the Product Trio - Product Manager, Designer, and Engineer - and the Customer to solve real problems efficiently. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming this model by supercharging creativity, planning, and execution. While there are countless ways of leveraging AI in the Product Operating Model, let's explore three standout ways that [...]

Agile Authority2025-10-15T17:58:16+00:00Categories: General, Team Greatness|

Scrum Guide 2020 Update

A significant revision of the official Scrum Guide 2020 was released this month (here). Here are my thoughts when comparing it to the previous 2017 version. Overall Thoughts The Scrum Guide is even more streamlined now. The length of the artifact has been reduced from 19 to 14 pages. Kudos to the authors, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, for their consistent emphasis on short [...]

Agile Authority2020-11-21T05:35:08+00:00Categories: General|

Agile Documentation – A Healthy View

Agile Documentation - Just Shoot Me Now The year was 2007. A longtime friend of mine called and said she wanted to do lunch. She had some “exciting news”. At lunch, she sat down and immediately let me know that her company had finally decided to “go Agile”. My response: “Great! What do you think that means?” She contemplated my open question for 20 [...]

Agile Authority2020-09-16T03:07:44+00:00Categories: General|