Opinions on leadership and management
Phone conferencing can be tricky to navigate. Without really seeing everyone you lack some visual clues as to when someone else may have something to add to the discussion. This can sometimes create scenarios where some people dominate the call and others are never heard from. As […]
Untrained staff, new employees, inexperienced technical resources. If you have been a project manager (predictive or adaptive) for any duration of time, you have had to work with someone who lacked some knowledge in a needed area. You have probably also had tight deadlines and not enough time […]
The Scrum Master is one of three recognized roles in Scrum. They are the servant-leader for the Scrum team, which means they serve the team by working to provide what the team needs to complete their job. This could be working to make sure they have the right […]
A joke I heard once was that in an 8 hour day, Agile has 7 hours of meetings and 1 hour of work. There can be some truth to it if you let it happen.
Agile is supposed to be strict. I am not saying miss a daily standup because you don’t feel like doing it, I am saying there are situations where letting some team members not attend would be acceptable.
The answer is yes you should hold a kick-off meeting. But why? The kick-off meeting gives everyone a chance to get together (team members, stakeholders, customers, etc.) and discuss the project. You can make sure everyone is informed of their expected role in the project It gives you […]
I get it. There are some bad employees out there. Sometimes those employees are just that way and you cannot do anything about it. Other times, you create them. Posting a want-ad like the one shown here, and maybe I am wrong, seems like a sure way to […]
The Big Five is a classification system of personality traits that many psychologists propose as being the principle traits of individual differences in personality (Carleton University, 2013). These traits may determine how an individual perceives the world and how they interact with it. While these may not be […]
You want your team to work as a unified team, but for some reason, your efforts at building a team-driven culture seem to be failing. You put up all the posters, talk about the value of teamwork in meetings, created a reward program to honor those that go […]
That often depends on who you ask. Some will say it is the Scrum Master. Some will insist it is the Product Owner. Some people will insist there isn’t one – technically, by name only, there isn’t one. But I am here to tell you that A) There […]
*The following is written by guest blogger Salarco Since 2012, I’ve been working for an international organization that promotes leadership through different kinds of cross-cultural exchanges for young people between 18 and 30 years old. Our goal is to promote peace and fulfillment of humankind’s potential through […]
There is a claim among people that Agile teams are leaderless. The claim can sound reasonable on the surface, with all the talk about self-organizing teams and a lack of defined roles… But it is wrong for several reasons: Self-organizing does not mean leaderless Agile is not a […]
Background noises, a dozen conversations, and coworkers gnashing on their lunch. The ring of someone’s phone every couple of minutes, an impromptu meeting being carried out that has nothing to do with me, and someone is talking louder and louder as they try to be heard. Someone tells […]
My guest blog post on making the best choices for your processes and tools. Originally published on tapscape.com In Agile, there is often an insistence on using low-tech and high-touch tools to collaborate and report on task statuses. While these tools may work, you shouldn’t limit your choices […]
Originally posted on Easy in theory, difficult in practice:
Familiar – Noun, a supernatural spirit or demon, often in the form of an animal, supposed to serve and aid a witch or other individual. Project managers frequently wish that they had a trusted right-hand person who could help them…
