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Making the Most of the Sprint Review

August 17, 2021
The Sprint Review is one of the most valuable events for the Product Owner, because it is an opportunity for the Scrum Team as well as stakeholders/customers to inspect what was delivered, discuss what progress has been made towards the Product Goal, and adapt accordingly. 
Blog Post

Cornerstones of Coaching

August 11, 2021
I have recently started down the path of certification with Co-Active Coaching as I wanted to improve my coaching skills; to know more about what great coaching looks like, to immerse myself in a community that will help me improve my abilities and to have credibility in my own mind about my own skills.
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Scrum en Côte d’Ivoire : Quel mélange !

August 9, 2021
Quand on parle de Scrum et d’Agilité, nous sommes habitués à penser à l’Amérique et à l’Europe, et non à l’Afrique. Je dois avouer que je suis totalement ignorant du niveau de Scrum et de l’Agile en Afrique. Inutile de dire que j’étais excité d’être invité en Côte d’Ivoire pour une formation PSM-1 et PSPO-1 dans la ville d’Abidjan.
Blog Post

The value of incremental delivery in Scrum

August 9, 2021
When I first started practicing Scrum, I thought that delivering a done, usable increment each Sprint was the least important part of the framework (spoiler alert: delivering a done, usable increment at least once per Sprint is critically important for reducing risk, enabling faster delivery of business value, reducing the accumulation of technical debt, and facilitating empiricism.)  At the time, I was the Scrum Master for a team that was building an online application, and the Product Owner did not intend to release the new application to production until it was complete.  What did it matter how we sliced up the work when a certain amount of work had to get done either way? How wrong I was.
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Scrum in Ivory Coast — Africa

August 3, 2021
When talking about applying Scrum and Agile, we are hardwired to think about America and Europe, not about Africa. I must confess I am totally ignorant about the status of Scrum and Agile in Africa. Needless to say, I was excited to be invited to Ivory Coast for a PSM-1 and PSPO-1 training in the city of Abidjan.
Blog Post

7 Tips on How to Create a Culture of Continual Experimentation and Learning and How to Overcome Resistance for Change

July 30, 2021
One of my favorite sayings is “Inspection without adaptation is waste”. For continuous improvement it is important not only to identify things that did not go so well but to also change something in the way you are working. If you change nothing, the inspection did not have an impact at all and is a waste of time and energy.
Blog Post

The Importance of Clear Accountability in Scrum 

July 25, 2021
A Scrum team consists of three clear accountabilities: one Scrum Master, one Product Owner, and Developers.  Often, when working with a Scrum team struggling with excessive conflict or a lack of trust, I find the culprit is a lack of clarity around each of these accountabilities.  Even with the best intentions, the Product Owner can become too focused on the upcoming Sprint and not focused enough on the bigger picture.  The Scrum Master can become overly protective of the team, and the Developers - wishing only to please - can take on too much work, jeopardizing the Sprint Goal.     
Blog Post

4 Ways Organizations Use Goals Poorly (and How EBM Can Help)

July 22, 2021
I am often asked how to create better goals. This comes up at the team level, and it also comes up for the wider organization. When we are dealing with complexity, there is no one right way, no perfect template, and no best practice. And I find it helpful to look at the goals people are using today, explore the benefits those goals are giving them, and identify if there are unintended consequences of how they are using goals. In this post, I will share some common patterns I have noticed that lead to using goals poorly.
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Time to Market - It’s Not Just About Speed

July 21, 2021
When I’m describing the Key Value Areas (KVAs) of Evidence-Based Management, I find Time to Market is often misunderstood to mean “just go faster.” We need to scrub off the scent of “we know what we need to do, we just need to do it faster.” In complexity, goals and execution have a lot of unknowns, and things emerge as we do the work. So, we will be unsuccessful if we choose to follow a plan, even if we do it faster.
Blog Post

Professionalism, Leadership and EBM

July 21, 2021
The role of an agile leader is to create and foster an environment where empiricism thrives to support the delivery of value. Evidence Based Management supports this, by providing a framework to link goals and objective measures to provide insights in to how effectively the organisation is working.
Blog Post

Making Measurement Meaningful with Evidence-Based Management

July 21, 2021
EBM provides organizations with an opportunity to use empiricism to improve customer outcomes by delivering greater value. It helps to improve collaboration by elevating conversations from opinion-based discussions to evidence-based discussions and decisions. EBM may feel awkward at first, but it will be rewarding. The seeds of learning and changing are there.