AGILE AUTHORITY BLOG
Tasks Masquerading as User Stories
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 [...]
Agile Approach Consistency – Good or Bad Idea?
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, [...]
Choosing a SAFe Training Partner
Choosing a SAFe training partner for your scaled Agile transformation can be a “roll of the dice” – with so many companies offering this service. Don't gamble away this opportunity! 5 Questions to Ask Here are 5 essential questions to ask when choosing a SAFe training partner: Who will be our instructor and what is their background? Training companies should be able to name the [...]
6 Devastating SAFe Anti-Patterns
Let’s briefly explore my list of 6 devastating SAFe anti-patterns. Each of these can be considered "devastating" due to the tremendous amounts of waste involved. #1 – Installing SAFe As-Is SAFe is huge. It is designed to cover most transformation needs from a perspective of scaling Agile at all levels – team, program, portfolio, and enterprise. Thinking of going SAFe? Here is a “SAFe [...]
SAFe Large Solution Anti-Pattern
One of the biggest anti-patterns I have consistently seen with SAFe enterprises is the misuse of the Large Solution level. Organizations (and yes Coaches) tend to misinterpret this extra level as required for inter-ART collaboration. They launch ARTs, realize that inter-ART dependencies exist, and immediately slap on the Large Solution as another level of overhead. Stop the madness! What Does SAFe Say? Here are [...]
Your Agile Transformation is Doomed to Failure – 5 Red Alerts!
Wouldn’t it be great if there was guidance on how to know if your Agile transformation is doomed to failure? Perhaps a short set of leading indicators or “red alerts” that give us an early warning signal? If we have this, we could react and potentially turn the ship around before it hits the iceberg. It could save millions in cost, time, and effort. Caveat [...]
“The trainer is an excellent instructor. He conveys AGILE in such a way that we wonder why we aren’t already using it!”
Manager, Kaiser Permanente
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