Agile Matinée is a fortnightly dispatch curated by Panaxeo, one Agile topic at a time. We bribe five Agile enthusiasts with croissants and expect them to collect interesting and read-worthy content in return. This one talks about Kanban!

Kanban's favorite carol is "Deck the Boards with WIP Limits." Why? Because it knows that too many tasks without limits can lead to a disaster! It checks its list twice, making sure each task gets just enough attention.

In this issue, we’re going to explore the main differences between Kanban and Scrum and when to use one over the other. We’ve prepared lots of practical examples and case studies for you, you’re welcome for that.

And since Kanban is sort of related to Flow, some Flow resources are waiting for you too. So, have a seat and make yourself comfy.

It’s time to dive into Kanban.

01.
Kanban vs. Scrum

(7-min read)

Let’s get this off the table right away – no, Kanban and Scrum are not the same. Yes, they can complement each other. In fact, they can complement each other so well it’s gonna make you cry.

That’s the bottom line. Click the button below to have it explained much better than our little paragraph ever could.

Learn More!

02.
When does Kanban sparkle Brighter Than Scrum?

(4-min read)

How do you deal with the differences?

Brendan Wovchko, an expert in both methodologies, knows that Kanban and Scrum are not enemies. Listen to his wisdom on when Kanban shines brighter. He’ll give you five conditions where it outshines Scrum.

Arm your team with the knowledge to decide for themselves which approach to pick.

Read the Article

03.
Kanban examples brimming with efficient workflows

(5-min read)

Still unconvinced? Have a practical example or two, why don’t you?

In a true Holiday fashion, cozy up with a cup of hot cocoa and let these Kanban examples be your guiding star through the winter wonderland of efficient workflows.

Read the Examples

04.
Christmas shopping

(20-min read)

And another case study where Kanban beats Scrum.

At NET-A-PORTER, they attempted to meet their production deadlines using Scrum. The fixed timeframes felt like trying to squeeze a reindeer through a chimney! Kanban with its WIP limits was much more appropriate in this case.

See how nicely it all ties back to letting the team work out which approach to pick?

Don’t get a false idea that Scrum always sucks and Kabnan always wins, though. It’s just that in some cases, in some teams, in some setups, Kanban might just taste a little better. That’s all it is – a matter of taste.

Full Case Study

05.
Minimize team cognitive load to boost software flow!

(10-min read)

What happens when teams get overloaded and turn grumpy? You best check that cognitive load, because overloading reduces efficiency.

Measure it first and dole out responsibilities accordingly. More work will get done, the team will be under less stress, everyone wins, everyone is happy.

Just like in this case study from OutSystems:

Check it Out

06.
What the F(low)?

(Holiday reading list)

Did the mere mention of Flow pique your interest?

Yeah, it sort of ties into all this Kanban stuff. If you’re eager to delve deeper into Team Topologies, Principles of Product Development Flow, or Flow Scaling, here you go.

A reading list for the Holidays:
📖 Kanban Pocket Guide
📖 Team Topologies
📖 The Principles of Product Development Flow
📖 Scaling Simplified

Social radar

What does it mean that Kanban is focus & flow? Aleš Pilný has gathered 10 “did-you-know” Kanban facts that highlight how Kanban dances to the rhythm of diverse organizational needs.

10 Kanban Facts

Bonus video

Henrik Kniberg unveils the secrets of optimizing your workflow in a way your grandma would understand. (Try it and send us proof.)

We are taking a Holiday pause

That means you won’t be getting any new issues in few weeks. Don’t cry though. Go enjoy your Holidays.

We’ll see you again in January! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

Agile Matinée is a fortnightly dispatch curated by Panaxeo, one Agile topic at a time. We bribe five Agile enthusiasts with croissants and expect them to collect interesting and read-worthy content in return. This one will introduce you to systems thinking and make your life that much easier.

Welcome back!

And stop right there. We’ll be zooming out in this edition, so you better get into the right mindset. Everything is interconnected, one distant thing affects the other. Got it? Okay, let’s continue.

You can easily tackle many problems by seeing them as interconnected puzzle pieces in a grand system. You just need to know which string to pull and when. That’s exactly what our teams, their environments, and overall product dynamics are driven by – systems.

Whether you’re a Scrum Master or a Product Owner, focusing on the map over the territory from time to time can help you analyze, predict, and debug systemic issues. May this edition serve you well!

“Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.”

— Siddhartha Gautama (aka the Buddha)

01.
Look at U! What kind of thinker are you?

(4-min read)

Alrighty, let’s start with a little self-reflection. When it comes to zooming in or out, are you more like a microscope or a wide-angle lens? Discover what type of thinker you are before we embark on our systemic topics. Thanks to João Dias, it’ll only take a moment.

Read it!

02.
Ahoy! — Why should systems thinking become your go-to leadership strategy

(8-min read)

We often find ourselves juggling multiple tasks and various responsibilities, leaving little room to address unforeseen challenges. When confronted with an issue, we tend to shift our focus entirely towards resolving it, momentarily setting aside all other tasks. But what about the bigger picture?

Imagine this: you’re the captain of a ship, navigating through treacherous waters. You don’t focus on just one leak, because fixing it won’t mean squat if the whole ship is about to sink!

Your secret weapon is systems thinking; Paul Slezak will help you navigate the choppy seas of leadership with skill.

Read it!

03.
The ABC – 6 Fundamental Concepts of Systems Thinking

(7-min read)

One should know the ABC before attempting to read Pride and Prejudice. Turns out, it’s the same with systems thinking. So here you go – dip your spoon into Leyla Acaroglu’s alphabet soup of systems thinking and its 6 core concepts.

(PS: There are more.)

Dive In

04.
Discover the magic of systems thinking in agile transformations!

(11-min read)

It’s like adding rocket fuel to your agile journey. Unlock the full potential of systems thinking and uncover hidden connections, optimize processes, and supercharge your agile transformation.

Let Prince Mishra help you take the leap into a whole new dimension of agility.

Read It

05.
Real-life lore? – 8 Typical system archetypes with workplace examples.

(an evening read)

Ever wondered why Jimmy got a promotion over (the much smarter) you? How to defuse that escalating relationship between your product owner, key customer, and the cleaning staff? Why does your team keep lowering the quality bar like it’s a limbo contest?

You’re not alone! Get to know basic systemic archetypes and measures to address them.

Important Note: Judging by the amount of “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” you’re likely to produce, we’re inclined to mark this one as NSFW.

Read the Study

06.
Systems thinking as a team-building approach!

(15-min read)

Once upon a time, in a booming company, they realized that teamwork and communication were like peanut butter and jelly for managing complex systems. So, they decided to spice things up with a dash of systems thinking.

The employees embarked on a quest to uncover hidden patterns and conquer the dreaded beast called burnout. They learned that a culture of “yes” was like a sneaky ninja, silently draining their efficiency.

Armed with the power of clear communication and managing customer expectations, they transformed their work life into a wild and wonderful journey.

And they all lived happily and efficiently ever after.

Read the Full Story

07.
Can we change the world with systems thinking?

(6-min read)

This is the story of a fearless entrepreneur who brought broadband internet to every U.S. public school classroom. He realized that it required more than just entrepreneurial flair; it needed a systems thinker!

With tools like research, communications, policy, and measurement, Evan mapped out the players, engaged governors, rallied CEOs, and pushed for policy changes. His efforts paid off, boosting school connectivity from 30% of U.S. districts to 77%

So, fellow social entrepreneurs, take a cue from Evan and unleash your inner superhero to tackle the whole system and change the world!

Click Here to Change the World

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now, go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

Agile Matinée is a fortnightly dispatch curated by Panaxeo, one Agile topic at a time. We bribe five Agile enthusiasts with croissants and expect them to collect interesting and read-worthy content in return. This one will make you a great listener and maybe teach you a thing or two about coaching.

Really? THIS headline after 10 editions full of advice?

You bet.

Seriously now. Coaching is a powerful yet underused skill that should be central to all Scrum Masters and leaders in general. Then, why is it so rare to meet Dr. Phil-like leaders in everyday life?

Not sure about you, but we’ve all been taught that in order to have an impact as a manager, you need SOLUTIONS for everything, all the time.

Now, imagine having just solved a burning problem and feeling good about saving the day.

What about the long-term effects? Did you just turn yourself into a bottleneck for all future problems? Have you helped your people learn to make their own decisions at all? Where is it all heading?

Turns out that in order to create wonderful teams you need to wonder more and advise less.

Let’s explore that a little more.

“Wisdom begins in wonder”

— Socrates

01.
The most powerful 4 minutes on coaching ever

(4-min watch)

Let’s say you still struggle to see any real value in coaching. Your mind screams “Things are under firm control! Blah blah, therapy is not gonna help!”

Trust us, we’ve been there too, and it took Michael Bungay Stanier only four minutes to shatter those hard-earned feelings of righteousness.

Watch the video by him and Marshall Goldsmith. That advice-first attitude is probably not only harmful to the team but also an example of some spectacularly bad leadership.

(By the way, if you don’t know who these two gentlemen are, Google them. It’s like Beyonce sharing the stage with Taylor Swift.)

Watch the Video

02.
Mentoring, teaching, coaching… What’s the difference?

Love it when some of the most influential people create a TL;DR instead of writing another 352-page book.

So, if you’re getting confused by what’s the right tool for what in your teams, start here. Lyssa Adkins (best known for her 352-page book) co-created the Agile Coaching Competency Framework which pretty much sums up the basic definitions and purposes of all the “soft” competencies you as a Scrum Master should master.

In a wheel. You can never have too many wheel-shaped infographics

Take a Look!

03.
Bend it! The arc-itecture of a great agile coaching conversation

(15-min read)

Let’s say you’ve bought into the importance of having coaching conversations now. But how do you start without sounding like a therapist?

Luckily, we have Francisco Manacorda, and Francisco has LinkedIn to share his coaching knowledge. He explains a simple and well-established concept of the “coaching conversation arc” and adds a lot of practical tips on top so you can relate better.

Even if you are already familiar with the “coaching arc,” give Francisco a read. He jammed so many useful extras into the post that even Chat-GPT couldn’t provide a succinct summary.

Grazie, Francisco!

Read the Article

04.
Huh? Eh? Powerful coaching question examples

(5-min watch)

Let’s imagine you already understand that as a coach, you’re:

a) Supposed to talk less than the coachee.

b) Not there to give advice.

So what the hell SHOULD I do, you might ask? Precisely that – ask. Be a Dr. Phil for a moment. Help the coachee find their own solutions and own them.

Here’s a good start – 8 powerful questions you can use to guide a coaching conversation + when to use them for what. (Should they not suffice, have another 7.)

Watch the Video

05.
I’m All Ears! – 11 tips to level up your active listening skill

(5-min read)

Active listening is a cornerstone for a good coach. Sounds reasonable, right?

Since we’re all IT people, we had a hard time figuring out how such an abstract skill could be developed and improved in ourselves. Turns out there’s a list of actionable tips from some of the best coaches.

Thank you, Forbes! You helped us become better listeners.

PS: If you’re into more formal but still neat stuff; here’s one from ICF.

Read the Article

06.
Coaching confidently – 7 tips on how to avoid common coaching mistakes

(10-min read)

You’re brimming with motivation to coach your team to glory. You’ve got your agenda prepared, the coaching arc tattooed on your forearm – what could go wrong? Well, several things. Here are just seven of them.

If you’re about to step into your first coaching conversation, remember – you will make mistakes. It’s perfectly fine. Just reflect and adapt!

After all, a skill that can be learned just by reading a newsletter would probably not be a very useful one.

Read the 7 Examples

07.
Ready for more? The Coaching series by Scrum.org

Before we part, remember that most of your workplace coaching will have something to do with the Scrum Team and stakeholders. You’re not here to help a mate get over losing a pet fish 27 years ago.

To ground yourself a little, explore the library of to-the-point resources on coaching by Scrum.org. You might just spot a situation you’re dealing with right now. Start there! We all learn best by doing.

Dive In

Social Radar

You may have heard about a neat tool called #dysfunctionmapping by our favorite LinkedIn bad-boy Michael Lloyd. What are the most common dysfunctions Michael encounters in teams, though? And, do you see a familiar one?

Read the Post

Something Special

We know you’re an Agilista, that’s why you’re reading this. But do you also code, perchance? We’re having a competition – the Coding Arena – and you can enter.

You’ll win awesome goodies! It’ll be fun, promised!

Learn More

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now, go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

Agile Matinée is a fortnightly dispatch curated by Panaxeo, one Agile topic at a time. We bribe five Agile enthusiasts with croissants and expect them to collect interesting and read-worthy content in return. This one will make you the best Scrum Master ever!

Be brutally honest – can you name your primary accountability as a Scrum Master? If you said something like “the establisher and ambassador of Scrum,” we meant the other one.

Unless “the effectiveness of the team” was your answer in under 5 seconds, you’ve either been poorly trained (not your fault!), or your understanding of the role is not yet focused enough.

Clarity comes with mastery. Yet, with so much noise, experience doesn’t always yield mastery. This is even more true in such a complex, creative, and multi-faceted role as the Scrum Master.

So, let’s cut through the noisy content mills of “scrumfluencers” and gain some clarity about what actually helps you become the excellent change agent you were always meant to be.

“If serving is beneath you, leadership is beyond you.”

— Anonymous (you may have heard of them, they’ve got tons of quotes)

01.
Bad Habits — Are You a Real or a Fake Scrum Master?

(5-min read)

Eugene Lai is not beating around any bushes here. He perfectly dissects the fake vs. the real behaviors and attitudes, providing a very explicit and accurate idea of what Scrum Masters should (not) be like.

If you feel a little hurt while reading this, don’t. Try to transform the feeling into motivation for becoming a kick-ass actual Scrum Master.

Bravo, Eugene.

Get Hurt

02.
The Book Club — Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts

This evergreen book by Geoff Watts is a must-read for any Scrum Master – fresh or seasoned. Geoff elegantly dances through core principles, case studies, and hints throughout the whole book.

It is packed with strong “Aha!” moments. And that’s probably why you can also purchase a deck of 50 quote cards for your daily reflections. (We love ‘em!)

Get the Book

03.
Trick or Treat! — Scary Scrum Stories Podcast

(36-min listen)

Spooky sounds, scary stories. It’s Halloween, and Hal Hogue and Erica Menendez sat down for a special edition of their podcast. If you are a fresh Scrum Master, this can be an eye-opening listen that will make you better prepared for your next sprint. Tune in, eh?

Listen.

04.
Research’d — The Scrum Team Effectiveness Theory

(a long read)

Our all-time favorite Scrum read may be a little on the expert side, but experienced Scrum Masters will benefit a lot. This research conducted by Christiaan Verwijs and Daniel Russo focused on dynamics that happen inside (and outside) the Scrum teams, their inter-relations, and drivers.

Suppose you strive for a harmonious and effective team but lack the time or discipline to read a research paper. In that case, scroll to page 13 and get a very straightforward explanation of how to improve individual factors.

Get Academical

05.
Are you Missing a Hat? — Coaching habit

What is the best yet least used way to make a Scrum Team more self-managing and cross-functional? Coaching!

While this stance is often unnatural for new Scrum Masters, it is also extremely important for you to level up yourself and the team to at least learn the basics. Been there, and we want to help you!

Get your hands on a copy of Coaching Habit. This book is short, fun, and very practical. You’ll be able to get your coaching MVK (minimum viable knowledge) in less than three hours, and you’ll be ready to practice your new stance tomorrow.

Get the Book

06.
Subscribe — The Exceptional Scrum Master podcast

While we very much like to believe that everything we post here gets stuck in your head forever, there are some indications that it might not be entirely the case. Luckily, smart people are making great podcasts regularly, so we figured we could give you a tip for our favorite.

As you’re gazing out the train window into the rain, listening to a new load of great Scrum Mastery tips – will you think of us?

Listen.

07.
Connecting the Dots — Sucessful Scrum = “Deliberate practice”

Do you still believe you need an innate talent or 10,000 hours to become a master at something? Then you probably don’t know Deliberate Practice.

When explaining Scrum to a layman, we love to use the analogy of Deliberate Practice. The more we understand and practice one or the other, the more we believe they are very close. Both conceptually and in principles.

If you’re new to DL, this might be a great opportunity to start learning like a beast. Go ahead, cozy up, contemplate the similarities, and create new neural connections you can leverage in your daily Scrum life.

Be deliberate

Social Radar

If you really must have one, what should the number one “developer productivity” metric be? This is a hot take by Krishna Kumar, a must-read expert on SW development flow optimization.

#1 Metric

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now, go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

Agile Matinée is a fortnightly dispatch curated by Panaxeo, one Agile topic at a time. We bribe five Agile enthusiasts with croissants and expect them to collect interesting and read-worthy content in return. This one is about sprint reviews!

Our researchers would like to present you with a carefully curated starter pack for a zombie Sprint review based on real-life observations across dozens of Zombie Scrum teams. You’ll need:

• optional calendar invites for the developers

• The latest Powerpoint template presenting what the teams worked on

• a sh*tscared lead developer clicking through a PoC that barely made it to the test environment a few moments earlier

• a handful of bored stakeholders eager to depart for the weekend

• a cleverly-timed question regarding feedback 5 minutes before the meeting ends

• cheerful meeting minutes email thanking everyone for the fantastic participation (same as the week before)

While this may be the sad industry norm, we are convinced that our readers know we can strive for a much higher bar. So, let’s explore today how to avoid these destructive patterns and maximize the value of sprint retrospectives for the teams, the stakeholders, and the product itself.

“Life is a series of changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

— Lao Tzu (no tag, we couldn’t find his LinkedIn)

01.
Ghosted? — How to (Re-)Engage Stakeholders Who Won’t Show Up

(10-min read)

You may have noticed we’re in love with Mike Cohn’s content. His takes are always very practical and rooted in decades of hands-on experience. Here, Mike provides seven common reasons why your sprint reviews might not be the go-to party for your stakeholders, how to identify each problem, and, of course… what you can do about it so they love you back.

Read Mike's Blogpost

02.
Far apart — Tips to Improve Sprint Reviews in Distributed Teams

(15-min read)

Stefan Wolpers is a prolific Scrum trainer, scrumfluencer, and author. So we knew Stefan had something in the archive! We did a quick search and found this lovely piece. Why, you wonder? Stefan focuses on a rising niche, distributed teams, here. One way they can overcome the distance and engage actively in a Sprint review is by using Liberating Structures. If you never tried an LS, this is the time!

PS: Stefan has a book about Scrum anti-patterns about to be released - go check it out. We’ve already pre-ordered ;).

Read the article

03.
Massively Interactive! - An Example String of Liberating Structures for your next Sprint Review

(8-min read)

Remember the starter pack from the intro? Bored faces, powerpoint, demo, bye-byes. To many, it seems impossible to overcome this pattern because “inspection and adaptation” are inherently dull processes.

Wrong! Some hardcore facilitation prep comes to the rescue. The Liberators put together a complete guide of a different set of Liberating Structures than Stefan for a Sprint review, including the reasoning behind the use of each one, nice photos, and printouts.

Still reluctant to try an LS? Don’t — we attest it’s game-changing.

Liberate yourself

04.
Spilled Beans — Agile Coach’s rulebook for improving Sprint reviews through mindset change

(17-min read)

Yuliia is an Agile & Lean coach. She spilled all her beans in this deep, methodical article about how she approaches Sprint review transformations with her clients, thoughtfully building up to a sustained event improvement. We particularly liked her incorporation of rational and emotional drivers per each participating role based on David Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. It never occurred to us, but it makes so much sense!

Check out the article

05.
Getting Hired — Must-know SR answers when interviewing for a Scrum Master role

(15-min read)

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night asking yourself whether to cancel a sprint review if no stakeholders can join? Such and similar open questions are, in fact, pretty good because the arguments a candidate gives to support his answer reveal a lot about their understanding beyond the mechanical elements of Scrum.

My fellow insomniac, here are a few such questions regarding Sprint Reviews, with PST’s commentary. We don’t guarantee they will make you score big on your next interview - but maybe they’ll expose a gap in your understanding and save your interview by making you dig a bit deeper into understanding the core principles.

Scrum Master Interview Questions

Social Radar

Prateek Singh, a heavyweight in the emerging Professional Kanban movement, ran some simulations to find out the best time to resolve dependencies in terms of improving throughput and cycle time. His conclusions are intriguing — would you have guessed right?

Read Prateek's post

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now, go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

Agile Matinée is a fortnightly dispatch curated by Panaxeo, one Agile topic at a time. We bribe five Agile enthusiasts with croissants and expect them to collect interesting and read-worthy content in return. This one is full of real life case studies!

We’ll trace an airline catastrophe back to mismanaged agility with two high-profile Agile sleuths, glue together a shattered leadership team aiming for an IPO, learn how five great facilitators engaged difficult audiences, discover parallels between the Starbucks service design and your Kanban board in JIRA. Lego bricks, formulas, and even Stalin — we were able to extract valuable agilist knowledge from the deepest corners to nurture your braincells.

“If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”

— 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

01.
The perfect storm — What happened at Southwest?

(30-min video)

Southwest had to cancel 16,700 flights impacting more than 2 million passengers after its crew scheduling software failed to handle staffing changes in December 2023, sparking a federal investigation by USDOT.

Two renowned PSTs Ryan Rippley and Todd Miller did their own sleuthing through public sources. They traced the operational meltdown to the subpar alignment of vision, tools, and OKRs. All were introduced in SouthWest’s recent Agile transformation.

Regardless of the analysis’ actual accuracy (it’s an OSINT, after all), this is a great practical case study. There are many compelling arguments for Evidence-based management (over OKRs and SAFe measures) when seeking organizational alignment. (And preventing clusterfucks.)

Frankly, we’ve never seen anything like this before.

Go check it out.

Watch the Video

02.
Leadership — Taming the deeply dysfunctional VPs

It’s dead and alive, thriving and horrendous, buzzing and deeply dysfunctional. A true Schrodinger’s fast-growing company.

Is there a way to fix it?

One of the most notorious leadership coaching case studies deals with a fictional, yet frighteningly real, corporation just like that. We follow one woman’s journey in turning an inherited shipwreck into a highly functional, goal-oriented team that reinvigorates the whole enterprise. One discussion and intervention at a time.

The book concludes with a chapter on the theoretical model used throughout the case study. You can apply it to pretty much any team you lead.

Patrick Lencioni’s masterpiece is a true leadership guide that improves with each read. Go read it yourself!

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

03.
Facilitation — 5 heart-warming stories from the trenches

(5-min read)

Rowena did something remarkable in her long-form LinkedIn post; she genuinely praised others — focusing on how their skill and wit transformed her career as a facilitator.

Each story highlights a different quality the facilitator was able to bring and apply at the right place and time:

1. Using what presents itself at the moment.

2. Making people seen.

3. The art of feedback.

4. Determination.

5. Connecting with others.

So, let’s take an example from Rowena: stop bragging and start expressing genuine gratitude. Top-shelf LinkedIn content.

Read the blog post

04.
Flow or drip? — Kanban at Starbucks vs. Costa & why you should care

(6-min read)

Transferring observations from everyday experiences into software teams has always been a great source of pleasure for me.

Ash Moran looked at the Kanban-esque process in Starbucks. He went down the list and explained how each element increases predictability and flow and reduces variance.

Love or hate Starbucks, most of Ash’s observations are nicely transferrable to the world of building software, too.

Even though Ash’s company – Patchspace – has long been dissolved, he still keeps the blog up. We’ll raise a cup (of coffee) to that. Cheers, Ash!

Have some Coffee

05.
Whoosh! — How Scrum helped a Formula student team cross the finish line

(5-min read)

Scrum success stories in software development are always the same. Booooring! How about we switch to fast cars instead?

A 30-person team of university petrolheads dreamt of participating in a Formula competition. As if the goal itself wasn’t challenging enough, they had a ton of problems inside the team as well.

This short story shows how they, with the help of an Agile coach, got their construction process under control, learned to self-organize, improve trust, transparency, and all the other nice things you get when you let go of ad-hoc vertical structures and embody the principles of Scrum & Kanban.

Wroom, wroom!

Read the story

06.
How LEGO got better by getting more Agile

(8-min read)

To give busy parents a break while making their kids smarter is a noble mission. But getting smarter about creating the playful and nurturing experience they are known for required Lego to rethink how they themselves operated.

Bosa walks us through core challenges, the adoption curve, organizational changes, and 3 Lego case studies. The organization found quite a bit of value in becoming Agile – in their collaboration, budgeting, and product focus.

Get Lego Inspired

07.
History meets Agile — How a Stalinist anti-Agile policy mortally warped the internal dynamics of an empire

(10-min read)

We fell in love with agility in part because it supports proper shared incentives for everyone involved. To drive our point home, we wanted proof of how an opposite approach can cause issues.

Boy, did we find one! “Issues” is an understatement – more like a colossal clusterfuck.

As CEE citizens, we were generally familiar with the planned economy of the once-hegemonic USSR. However, the deeply dysfunctional internal dynamics this antithesis of agility fuelled left us speechless. It is an excellent read and a very practical tale of caution for today’s leaders too.

Anyway, thanks, Stalin — had you known Agile, the USSR’s demise might not have happened.

Get educated, comrade!

Social Radar

Jeff Sutherland gets (rightfully) angry, calms down, and drops an enlightening explanation of the scientific roots of Scrum. Los Alamos played a role; that’s just a fun fact.

Read Jeff's Post

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now, go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

Our world is output-driven. We all use the newest tools, have a sweet set of delivery metrics, and an all-stars team. Were matters this simple, building a successful business would be a walk in a park.

The harsh truth is that the only thing that matters is how much customer value we create. Becoming a value-oriented, outcome-focused organisation is a strategic decision — and it requires a whole new skillset. That's why we decided to bring you a selection of tips to kick-start (our course-correct) on value.

Happy reading!

1. Research'd - Elements of value

Ever felt frustrated with how the concept of (business) value gets thrown around in vague, "whatever-suits-my-argument" ways? It is the Holy Grail of our Quest, yet it remains undefined.

Getting a guide on what value is is a tall order.

Especially if it explains both the concept and the practice, is coherent, practical, and researched, aaand that teaches you how to optimize it in your own product.

Do the requirements sound too harsh? We don’t think so. This timeless piece by HBR is the best we’ve found so far. Worth a read.

Read it!

2. The Perverse — How poor metrics created an army of mutilated cows

One of the deadliest enemies a manager faces on their quest are lousy metrics. No matter how good your intentions are, you must imagine the worst-case, outright perverse way of people bending it. Because, eventually, metrics and KPIs co-create culture.

In the 1990s, the European Union decided that the number of milk-producing cows needed to be reduced. What follows is a cautionary tale of how a simple innocent metric totally missed the point and instead, resulted in a man-made tragedy.

Read the tragic tale

3. Mindset matters — How ETSY enforces Experimentation to sustain value creation

All our features and tickets are just hypotheses of value – the actual truth happens in production. We all know the Agile theory. So, it's always refreshing to get evidence from the big boys that the experiment-and-validate approach drives their success. They are always so secretive!

On your next commute, listen to Harry Stebbings interviewing Etsy CEO Josh Silverman about how Etsy structured its operations around constant experimentation. It’s agile and sustainably creates value.

Learn their Secrets

4. Practically speaking - Calculating and prioritizing business value (ScrumInc.com)

Much has changed since 2014, but this in-depth presentation from the Agile 2014 Conference in Orlando failed to age. (Just like its author, Alex Brown. Sick beard!)

Explore the facets of value in the context of Scrum and get practical to determine and calculate it. Learn to manage value in an ongoing day-to-day hurry on your Agile project. There’s homework too. Gotta love homework.

Learn more!

5. What if… nobody cares? Impact Mapping Template to try now

When it comes to rallying the team around a vision, building empathy with the customers, or simply getting your product priorities straight — there's no better time-proven tool than Impact Mapping.

And since we all use Miro anyway, we found you a sweet template to conduct an Impact Mapping session with your team. Tim Herbig made it, and we think it's beautiful. You have zero excuses not to go and get that much-needed clarity.

Impact Mapping Template

6. Law and order — Why ordering a backlog by value or priority is a bad idea.

One of the evergreen misconceptions about Scrum is that you as the Product Owner should order the backlog by value. Or priority. That would, of course, make your life a whole lot easier but also turn your product into a long-term shipwreck.

Seems nuanced? It is. However, we found that the topic of work order is packed with misunderstandings in practice. Highlighting the correct way to approach Product Backlog ordering seemed like a worthy service to the world. Here you go.

Order your Backlog

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now, go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

Howdy Agilistas,

Good news: September nostalgia is back, and so is our Newsletter!

Bad news: A team trying to succeed in Agile without enlightened leadership is like trying to win a lightsaber duel with a pool noodle – amusing to watch but otherwise tragic.

So, whether you’re the leader trying to lovebomb your Agile teams or a Scrum Master begging for empathy from the organization, we’ve got you. Valuable and actionable tips have been scoured from the interwebs to make your leadership more Agile – and successful.

Have at it!

1. R U a Doctor or a Charlatan? – Lead by Embracing Evidence

How about a doctor prescribing you meds “because it feels right”? You’d rather get a proper examination and diagnosis, right? Unless you live in Slovakia (like we do), you’d probably be horrified (we got used to it 🤷).

When working on complex products or projects, embracing an evidence-based, outcome-focused approach is one of the most critical mindset shifts a leader can make. Possible side effects include:

• More objective product decisions.

• More meaningful, value-based metrics.

• Enhanced focus, self-management, and a sense of purpose.

• Less wasteful “seems right” works

So, start leading by embracing the EBM mindset. We dare you!

Become a doctor

2. Scary Shift  – How not to f*ck up your Agile Transformation

As married folks know well; to survive, you sometimes need to change who you are completely.

The situation is eerily similar when a traditional organization attempts to become Agile – they soon realize that “doing Agile well” requires them to drastically reshuffle their mindsets, org charts, interactions, and leadership styles.

This McKinsey 25-pager is a sweet and to-the-point explainer for leaders who have found themselves amid a frustrating Agile transformation. You’ll get a well-researched overview from a consulting G.O.A.T. of what needs to happen to your head and your meetings to succeed in your Agile journey.

PS: As we’re all happily married and fairly Agile as a company, we can attest that the pains are worth the results a million times over.

Get Married

3. Fighting the Seniors – How to sell Agile to Management

Confession time – we’re still petrified when we have to sell the Agile approach to a senior manager who’s only been working traditionally for like, since 3000 B.C. or so.

Obviously, no one's buying when approached with an all-or-nothing dogmatic mindset. Luckily, there’s a better way.

Read this blog from Disciplined Agile as a prep. Before any conversation, you’ll learn to empathize with the seniors’ concerns. You’ll also get some valuable tips on approaching the discussion constructively. Fingers crossed for success!

Click here to Fight!

4. (Psychological) Safety first – Embrace the Vulnerabilities

Some facts: You can’t lead knowledgeable people working on creative novel projects as you’d lead an army. It. Just. Does. Not. Work. Why?

Think of it as a domino that starts with everyone feeling safe to speak, opine, and err in their work.

Without this, there’s no openness. Ideas are missed. Conflicts simmer. Thud, a domino piece falls.

But it gets worse – without openness, there’s no trust. Thud.

Without trust, you don’t have a team. You have a group of insecure, unmotivated individuals. Each of them is laser-focused on themselves and their own Jira tickets and evening plans. Terrifying, eh? Thud.

This is not the first time we’ve addressed psychological safety. It’s just too central to any great team. Even Harvard Business Review chipped in with a well-researched and consulted compilation of five practical ways you can try to foster psychological safety in your teams as a leader, so how about trying one yourself?

Psychological Safe Space here

5. (The no-bullshit) Book club – The Professional Agile Leader

Whether you’re a natural leader or just ended up leading people by happenstance, this is your new professional Agile leadership bible.

Like other publications from our much beloved “Professional Whatever” book series, this book is comprehensive, practical, and full of real-life examples.

You’ll learn how to build, motivate, diagnose, measure, and think about Agile teams as a true servant leader. If you’re serious about being a seriously good Agile leader, do your teams a favor and invest a few bucks in compressed trees or digital ink.

Read it

6. The Final Piece of the Puzzle – Leader’s Guide to understanding and supporting Scrum Teams

Are you funding, managing, or overseeing Scrum Teams? Does the Scrum Guide sound too detailed and nuanced for your needs?

Luckily, Scrum.org understands how special you are, so they’ve made this one for you. In just a single toilet sitting, you’ll discover:

• Who is who and what is what in Scrum.

• How not to be the bull in your Scrum Team’s china shop – and instead support them exactly how they need to excel.

• When it makes sense for you to attend a meeting or step in, and when to pull back.

• How to extract maximum value from the interactions with your team

Pro tip: This is an instructive read for Scrum Masters, too. You’ll see Scrum from a fresh perspective. While you’re at it, pop an email with a link to this newsletter up the org chain and make your life easier.

Scrum made Clear here

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now, go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

tl;dr: The vast majority of successful products you know weren’t miraculous ideas from a bath tub. They also weren’t based on a thorough analysis of the market alone. Validating an idea effectively requires a lot of ingenuity. Today’s hustling market and scarce funding landscape are ruthless.

Meet Lean UX, the holy savior of your business. It provides the framework to conceive, build, and validate product ideas effectively. No time and money wasted on building the whole thing right away. Master it and you’ll have tripled your chances of becoming the next Steve Jobs!

This one is a banger, enjoy.

1. Smart from the Start — How Uber, Airbnb & Dropbox Released MVPs on a Budget

These three illuminating stories show that you don’t need to build the whole shebang before validating the market. Engaging your brain cells first and your purse later can get you quite far with the initial market validation. If it takes you 12 months to build an MVP, you might want to rethink the “M” part.

Read the stories

2. The GOAT - Y Combinator’s tips on building an MVP (16-min video)

Y-Combinator is the most notorious startup accelerator with some of the best ROI within the tech VC scene. That should be convincing enough to listen to them on the topic of building products effectively. When was the last time a 15-minute video actually saved you months?

Save months!

3. Fail Faster! — 15 Lean Techniques to test your MVP (without robbing a bank)

Failing fast is an art. Not only it saves a ton of time, but it also gives you the opportunity to find the right pivot before your startup runs out of money. There’s a plethora of Lean UX techniques that can help you set up an efficient validation experiment to confirm or reject your product hypothesis quickly. Here’s a helpful list of a few of the best ones.

So, if you dream of having a personal concierge, you might as well concierge your startup idea first. Not following? Read up, and you’ll understand!

Click here to Fail

4. Beware the Crowd — Risks when Crowdfunding to validate an MVP

Hey, we all know the upsides of crowdfunding. But as with all silver bullets… Well, crowdfunding is not a silver bullet. So, before you launch that campaign to test out your billion-dollar idea, have an honest review with this nice checklist and see how these risks apply to your “AI-powered Web 3.0 Blockchain Toothbrush”.

Introducing... Checklist!

5. The WTF - r/ShittyKickstarters

Reddit at its best — collecting the worst of fakery, crappy products, and botched Kickstarter campaigns. While the educative value might be limited (unless you are about to release a really stupid campaign yourself), fun is almost guaranteed. Memes write themselves here.

Become a Memelord

6. O’really? — How to Write Lean UX Experiments User Stories

So far, we’ve mostly talked about the grand scheme of things. It’s time to get hands-on because fluffy concepts and ideas won’t bode well with that JIRA backlog. Luckily, the Lean UX course by O’Reilly published a video excerpt that teaches you how to make them bode! Scrum-compatible, JIRA-ready, nitty-gritty – four minutes of your time.

Get hands-on

7. The Bible – Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden

If you are serious about creating a new product, and you haven’t stumbled upon this book yet, well… You have a program now. The fact that the paperback goes for $440 on Amazon (as of June 4, 2023, at least) is a good indicator that there are some prime spots on collector shelves reserved for this one. The saner of us can opt for a hardcover, Kindle, or Audible (our fav) version for just a few bucks. Get a quick intro to the wonderful concept of Lean UX product development.

This is not an affiliate link.

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

tl;dr: Unless done is really Done, you’re not doing Scrum!

A good ‘Done’ unlocks consistent quality, sustainability, and frictionless, timely feedback from stakeholders and users. The Definition of Done is a powerful tool to gain a 360 perspective on what quality means for everyone involved. Plus, it’s a way to control that creeping tech debt.

So, why do so many teams struggle with getting their DoDs right, and what are the remedies? Let’s go.

1. Stronger Together - Use DoD to improve Quality & Workflow in Tandem

This blog explains the link between DoD and quality, inspires you with a logical structure for your DoDs, surprises you with an opportunity to improve your DoD and workflows in parallel, and caps it off with a tricky story about Jim from compliance who tried to ruin a Scrum Team’s flow (with a happy ending). Learn something new and be Definitely Done.

Read the blogpost

2. Is this a game for you? — DoD Kards

While “Cards against Bad Quality” would have been a better name, DoD Kards remain a creative facilitation tool for a team-wide DoD discussion. Print ‘em out and go do something great for your product’s health.

Get the Cards

3. Excel(lent) - DoD Template for Remote Teams

You want to facilitate a DoD discussion and capture the outcomes, but DoD Kards don’t cut it because Cindy is connecting from a cruise ship via Zoom. Luckily, Ignazio Paz – a skilled Agile MooC teacher – leaked one of his DoD templates out to the wild. Take it, customize it, hold a vote, save it, send it to your stakeholders, and finally, follow Ignazio on LinkedIn.

Gimme the sheet now

4. Broke! - 4 Scrum Anti-Patterns that Cause Technical Debt

Poor, absent, or outright ignored DoDs is a faucet that leaks technical debt until you’re knee-deep and weeping in desperation. Maarten describes 4 common causes for a flourishing tech debt in his blog, along with a more nuanced explanation of how to approach DoDs in multi-team environments. Oh, and a word or two about why Hardening Sprints suck.

Become debt-free!

5. OmG — DoR vs. DoD vs. AC

This might be a 101, but we hear some folks get confused by the difference between Acceptance Criteria, Definition of Done, and Definition of Ready. Clarity is only two links and 10 minutes away, so no more excuses! ;)

DoD vs. AC

DoD vs. DoR

6. Ey, Ay! — We Asked ChatGPT Why Teams Struggle with their DoDs.

And it’s pretty good, actually. Albeit, quite long, you may want to pace yourself.

1. Ambiguity: Avoid using vague or unclear language. Make sure each criterion is specific and easy to understand, so the team knows exactly what is expected. 

2. Overloading the DoD: Don't include too many criteria, as this can overwhelm the team and make it difficult to achieve a state of "done." Focus on the most important aspects that ensure a high-quality product increment. 

3. Ignoring team input: The Definition of Done should be a collaborative effort involving the entire Scrum team. Avoid imposing a top-down approach, and ensure that all team members have the opportunity to contribute to the DoD's creation. 

4. Neglecting stakeholder expectations: Be sure to consider the needs and expectations of all relevant stakeholders, including customers, product owners, and other business units, when defining the DoD. 

5. Overlooking continuous improvement: The DoD should be a living document, subject to regular review and adjustment as your team and project evolve. Avoid treating it as a static, unchangeable set of rules. 

6. Confusing the DoD with acceptance criteria: While both are important, the DoD represents the general criteria for determining when work is complete, while acceptance criteria are specific to individual user stories. Avoid mixing these two concepts. 

7. Forgetting to align with organizational standards: Your DoD should be in line with your organization's quality, regulatory, and other relevant standards. Avoid creating a DoD that does not adhere to these guidelines, as this can lead to inconsistencies and compliance issues. 

8. Inconsistency across teams: If you have multiple Scrum teams, try to maintain a consistent DoD across all of them. This will help streamline cross-team collaboration and ensure a uniform approach to product quality. 

9. Focusing solely on functionality: While functional requirements are important, do not forget about non-functional aspects such as performance, security, usability, and maintainability. Including these aspects in your DoD will help ensure a well-rounded, high-quality product. 

10. Not adapting to the project's context: Different projects may have unique requirements and constraints that should be reflected in the DoD. Avoid using a one-size-fits-all approach and customize the DoD for each specific project, while still maintaining consistency across teams. 

11. Lack of clear ownership: Assigning clear ownership for validating the DoD criteria helps prevent confusion and miscommunication. Avoid situations where team members are unsure of who is responsible for verifying that the DoD has been met. 

12. Overemphasis on documentation: While documentation is essential, avoid making the DoD overly focused on documentation at the expense of actual product quality. The primary goal of the DoD should be to ensure a high-quality product increment, not just thorough documentation. 

13. Insufficient communication: Make sure the DoD is effectively communicated to all team members, as well as relevant stakeholders. Avoid assuming that everyone is on the same page without explicitly discussing and clarifying the DoD. 

14. Not considering technical debt: Addressing technical debt should be part of the DoD to maintain the long-term health of your product. Avoid ignoring technical debt, as this can lead to increased maintenance costs and decreased product quality over time. 

15. Skipping the validation process: After defining the DoD, it's crucial to ensure that it's being followed and validated throughout the development process. Avoid treating the DoD as a mere checklist without actively using it to guide and evaluate the work.

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

1. Research’d - Drop the Anchor!

Wanna know a simple secret to estimating better? Shut up. Numbers, hints of expectations, budgets, or even utterly unrelated quantities spoken during an estimation workshop act as a significant psychological anchor on the team, skewing their estimates. That’s a powerful take-away from this beautifully named research paper we dug up for you.

Dive into the study

2. Story points — An all-level quick guide

If we got a penny for each time we uttered “story points”... Yet, this neat primer was a good refresher that gave us one or two new nuanced perspectives. Accessible to all levels, this will become our go-to explanatory text for new colleagues, friends, and aunts at a Sunday matinee.

Share it with your aunt

3. Beyond the Basics — 5 More Agile Estimation Techniques

Don't be a one-trick pony! There are more ways to estimate than just Planning Poker. PremierAgile did a good job compiling a quick run-down of 6 Agile estimation techniques and – more importantly – telling us puny mortals when to prefer which.

Become a 6-trick pony

4. The (mountain) G.O.A.T. — Advanced Topics in Agile Planning

The only thing better than reading Mike Cohn is watching Mike Cohn. Tell your significant other you’re going to the gym, buy a cigar, and witness epiphany. It doesn’t get much better than this.

5. Moment of Clarity — Forecasting, not estimating

Sometimes, being surgical about our terms helps. We all (should) know that Agile is about maximizing value, not output. We’ve also been taught to gently smack a manager who judges our team’s performance using velocity.

Listen, we don't want to make any promises, but maybe, just maybe, if we all read the following post by Zuzi Sochova and adjusted our daily lexicon, we’d all live happily ever after in harmony. Maybe.

Start Living in Harmony

6. Casino Time! — Use data and forecast more accurately in 5 minutes (+ free tool by Panaxeo)

We’re all “data-driven” when we advertise ourselves. But then we head to the sprint planning, play some poker and call it a day. Stop.

There is a simple way of devising good, accurate forecasts grounded in actual evidence. We explain a good forecast and a method to achieve it from your own data. You know what? Let’s make it easy. Here’s a free Monte Carlo forecasting tool for you. Try it for your next planning.

And let us know how accurate it was. Be honest!

Grab the Free Tool!

7. The Anti-climax — Click that report button in JIRA!

JIRA is the most hated, loved, and fragile poor thing that’s also not going anywhere anytime soon. Jira Agile’s got heaps of good stuff though. Ever tried clicking on the “Report” button? Well, it’s got a Cycle Time report! Being a core Kanban metric of flow, CT is a good assistive metric to consider in forecasting stable-flowing projects. So yeah, go check it out.

P.S.: If you are unfamiliar with flow metrics or Kanban+Scrum in general, read the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams first to understand what you’re looking at.

How to show Cycle Time in JIRA

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

1. Research’d — Do Developers Actually Hate Standups?

Viktoria Stray from the University of Oslo bunched up with two fellow researchers to shed some light on the central question of our times — do developers hate standups? I won’t spill the beans, but the researchers concluded that seniority, team size, and frequency all play a role in enabling 15 minutes of joy or despair. Even if reading research papers is not your thing, try this one. It’s very readable and the conclusions are well summarized.

Read the research

2. From The Trenches — The 4,000-employee Daily Standup in SAAB

Many of us know SAAB as the “car company that doesn’t make cars anymore”. But did you know they are the creme de la creme manufacturers of fighter jets? Their success leans heavily on being Agile through and through. There’s a ton of jaw-dropping stories from SAAB, but we find the way they approached their daily stands with 4k+ attendees as one of the most interesting ways how to scale a meeting.

Daily standup at SAAB

3. Spruce it up! — 7 Fun Standup Ideas to Keep Teams Focused & Engaged

While there are plenty of facilitation tips all over the Internet, we regard this selection from Geekbot as particularly neat. Their tips strike the right balance between the specific and the general, leaving room to tailor each tip to your circumstance.

Our tip: Pick five and try one a day next week.

7 Standup Ideas article (2 minute read)

4. Go Bizarre! — The Potato Facilitator Gadget

Ever wondered how to tame that chatty Cathy on your standup? Dimitris from Delphi solved the problem with a custom-made, 3D-printed, spud-shaped, time-ticking bomb gadget to enforce limits on the talkers in his team. Much time and sophistication went into his pet project. So be a good citizen and give Dimitris a read.

WTF is Scrumtato?

5. The Kanban Column — 7 Principles for Streamlining Your Dailys

Kanbanists, beware. Sonya Siderova from Nave shared some nice and sober tips for facilitating a standup for teams running a Kanban. We especially liked the subtle but powerful idea of “walking the board from right to left” until you hit the wall (we might have made that up).

Full article

6. The Experiment — Asynchronous Daily Standups

Just like with other things in life, a small experiment here and there won’t hurt. The pals from Friday.app shared their thoughts on the pros and cons of switching your dailies to the asynchronous lane. While this might not be the ideal long-term solution, why not give it a try this Friday and see what happens?

More on async standups

7. Hidden Gem — Scrum.org’s Facilitation Resources for the Daily Scrum

Look, we all love Scrum.org. But for whatever reason, they keep shoving their best content four levels deep into their webpage. So, if you ever wondered how to avoid your standups turning into status reports, how to ask powerful questions virtually, or about facilitating a daily in general, go brew yourself a nice big cup of whatever and dig into this treasure chest of articles.

Whole lotta resources

Bonus — Panaxeo says, “Let it Flow”

I love my team’s standups — we don’t have a structure. Yet, they are effective and mostly fun.

What’s the secret, you might ask?

There’s no secret. I simply focus on the actual purpose of the team meeting daily — identifying and managing the risks of not meeting the sprint goal as a team.

So, as a Scrum Master, my primary concern is for the daily to happen, well… every day we work.

When I attend, I silently focus my attention on the question, “Are we talking about risks?” And whatever conversation gets us there is fine by me.

Over time, I noticed that letting the conversation flow naturally is actually really effective.

The reason is that teams perform best when they build on each other’s ideas and insights. That’s where freely flowing conversation always trumps “passing the baton” agendas. We all think in different patterns — and putting them into “the blender” may be a good recipe to gain more insights as a team (compared to imposing a robotic 3 question structure on every living being).

I can hear you — “But I am worried about the discussion getting off the rails.” Just let it happen. Then bring it back to the team and agree on the boundaries together. (Alternatively, equip them with a robotic potato bomb.)

So yes, for me, Daily Standups are a risk management event. And fun, too. You never would’ve guessed that these two things could coexist, would you? :)

Adam Okruhlica, our co-CEO at Panaxeo

That’s it; we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Oh, and unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn or share this post with your friends and frenemies!

Hasta la Agilista, baby!

1. Research’d — Effective retrospectives measurably improve team performance!

To kick off with a focus on value, we found this in the Impact of Agile Quantified report:

Effective retrospectives result in teams with 20% higher balanced performance than teams with no retrospectives.

We knew it! But it’s nice to have it confirmed.

Our Tip: Send this to that manager who pressures teams to “stop that retro slacking-off thingy.”

Read the report

2. From the trenches — When Developers get a turn facilitating a Retrospective

Who said only the Scrum Master could facilitate a retrospective?

In this short & sweet post, Lu-Vuong describes his experience facilitating a retrospective as a Developer. Kudos to him for putting considerable effort into planning and executing an engaging agenda.

More interestingly, the story showcases the concept of an alternating facilitator gone right. If you feel your team is disengaged or doesn’t appreciate the value of retrospectives, a little rotation might help turn things around.

I think it's a great idea that everyone on the team should have a turn at facilitating a retro. By alternating facilitators, it allows each retrospective to have a different format as well as a unique perspective since it won't always be the same individual running it.

Read the article (3 minutes)

3. Common Sins — 9 Agile Retrospective anti-patterns

Kaboom! An on-point checklist of common maladies that lead to ineffective or outright frustrating Sprint retrospectives.

Whether a junior Scrum Master or a seasoned Agilist, you’ll be familiar with at least one of the anti-patterns on the list, defo.

Our tip: Scan this whenever you feel there’s something wrong with your retros. Chances are you’ll find a hint.

Read (8 minutes)

4. Team First — 3 Tips on Fostering Psychological Safety

The previous article foreshadowed a critical enabler for open and productive retrospectives – psychological safety.

Teams that experience psychological safety are generally happier, more productive, and ready to engage in new ideas and experiments.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept, this short primer from our beloved Scrum.org will get you up to speed in 4 minutes.

Watch (4 minutes)

5. Get funky! — The Dog-loving Facilitator’s Retrospective Template

We love this one and you’ll love it too. Who says dogs can’t be used as facilitation tools?

Ondrej Papanek created a Miro template around the idea of visiting a dog park. He skilfully incorporated typical retro activities like the mood gauge, idea gathering, and action planning. The “ice-breaker” part is implicit — classy!

If dogs are your team’s thing, this template might unleash (ha-ha) a great discussion.

View Template

6. The G.O.A.T. — Retrospective Wiki; a bottomless pit of practical knowledge

Unparalleled in its breadth of useful content, this is the rightful king of this digest.

In hundreds of Wiki entries, you’ll find a broad menu of retrospective plans, tools, exercises, diagnostic strategies, tips & tricks… Well, anything you could have ever wished for.

Treat it as reference material, a source of random inspiration, or a leisure activity. Up to you.

Retrospective Wiki is run by Bob Rowley. What a legend.

Browse (∞ minutes)

7. Hidden Gem — Do you know the SBI technique of effective feedback?

While not a traditional Agile bookshelf piece, Radical Candor interestingly converges with Agile values and tactics.

An appetizer; structuring your feedback in a Situation — Behaviour — Impact triptych can help keep difficult conversations non-confrontational, productive, and respectful. If you seek new perspectives on leadership, this book will save your next rainy weekend.

Fancy a quick run-down on the SBI technique? Read this instead.

Buy Book

Bonus tip! — The CEU practice of decorating retrospective items by Jeff Sutherland

Buried within the 220 pages of The Scrum Papers, there is a small, handy trick on page 26.

Jeff suggests one final look at the board before concluding a retrospective. Label each item as C (”caused by Scrum”), E (”exposed by Scrum”), and U (”Unknown”).

Potential benefits are manyfold. It might help make the benefits of Scrum more apparent to the team. Maybe spark a deeper discussion about an item vis-à-vis the process. Occasionally, it might even question the fit of the Scrum framework for the project & its environment.

Tip: Indulging in The Scrum Papers is a serious commitment but worth every penny. Remember – if you are serious about Scrum, whatever Jeff writes is a must-read.

Do it

That’s it, we’re off.

Hope you’ve basked enough in this Agile well of inspiration. Now go about your day and put this stuff into practice! Unless you want to miss our next digest, follow us on LinkedIn.

Hasta la Agilista, baby!