ARTICLES
Next Steps After Getting the BA Job
By the way, congrats on landing the job- the hard part is over; what follows next is a series of trials & errors, fits and sleepless nights (weirdly, I personally find these thrilling). Anyway, contrary to popular assumptions, you won’t get into a project immediately, and if you are asked to pick up a project […]
Product Ownership & Value Stream Maps
When you think of Product Owners, you think of product delivery using the Agile Scrum framework, which includes the facilitation of scrum ceremonies and the observation (depending on the maturity of the scrum team) of the daily stand-ups (the facilitation is for the scrum master). One of the joys of being a Product Owner is [...]
The Problem with User Tasks in Process Analysis
A user task is a task that is performed by a human with the help of a software (e.g. typing a document into MS Word). As you know, the human behaviour, in its uniqueness, is plagued with characteristics such as errors, bias and delays-- all of which systems and automations are immune to. This write-up [...]
Basics of API (2)
Say you are asked to support a Dev Team by writing a technical specification that describes how to interact with an Address API . The first step would be to agree on which open-source API (service) that's the best to use. For the sake of this explanation, let's assume that the Dev team have agreed [...]
Using Agile to Write User Documentation as a Team
How to share the load of user documentation. I recently presented a webinar about agile technical communication with TechCommNZ ( The Agile Technical Communicator). During the question and answer session, I got a lot of inquires as to how best work with other collaborators on user documentation. This inspired me to write a blog article or [...]
Use WSJF to Inspire a Successful SAFe® Adoption
By definition, Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a prioritization model used to sequence jobs to produce maximum economic benefit. Utilizing WSJF relies on Cost of Delay and job size to determine its weight in priority. Think of Cost of Delay as the price you pay for not delivering a feature to the end user [...]
Software development in the Army gets an Agile reboot
By Paul McKellipsJune 23, 2020 (Fort Belvoir, Virginia) More than 200 people from the General Fund Enterprise Business System’s (GFEBS) Development and Modernization (DevMod) product, along with System Support Operations (SSO), Financial Information Management (FIM), and federal contractor IBM, participated in a two-day virtual Agile Program Increment (PI) Planning event to generate requirements for all […]
The Makings of a Great Scrum Master
In my experience working in the agile environments, I have found that many of my counterparts have one thing in common:
finding ways to constantly improve.
In this blog, we explore some common attributes that many of us use to master our craft.
Scrum Master Stories: Building Relationships
Not that long ago, we had a transition in leadership on our team. Our product owner at the time was taking a sabbatical and we were in the process of finding a new one. It was challenging for me as a scrum master to make sure that the team felt grounded and engaged during that [...]
Ten Steps to Landing Change Well
Change is hard. For more than a decade, I’ve used that simple reminder to start every discovery and transformation engagement. Even with that warning in mind, those responsible for leading change will often underestimate just how hard it can be to land meaningful change well. Change is a very personal thing. In general, people will [...]
What’s a Product Owner to Do?
When I coach companies on Lean and Agile methodologies, I strive to have dedicated, co-located Product Owners (POs), Scrum Masters, and teams. In the 21st century and given our current context, many companies involved in a SAFe® transformation have POs and Scrum Masters who are leading multiple remote teams. It can be challenging to coach [...]
POs and PMs: A Dynamic Duo
Welcome to the second post in our series about best practices to create a healthy relationship between product owners and product managers that drives product success. You can read the first post here. I’ve heard lots of metaphors used to describe the relationship between a product owner (PO) and a product manager (PM). One of [...]
The Four Startups Mindset
The digital startup's ecosystem has evolved rapidly after it birth during the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s since then various species of startups have been given birth to in all kinds of industry and even emerged new industries. The likes of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Jumia and Interswitch in Africa have shown the level of [...]
How We Executed a Successful, Virtual PI Planning
Program increment (PI) Planning plays a critical role in ensuring cross-team alignment and collaboration. Typically done as a two-day, in-person event, PI Planning brings teams and leadership together to create program plans based on a shared mission and vision. As our marketing team approached its most recent PI Planning, we faced a challenge: how could [...]
The problems using agile in digital service delivery agencies
The Agile framework is effective for building digital products, but how can digital agencies work with agile, especially when client engagement is more prevalent? In my years of working in digital agency environments, agile can be inherently challenging, especially when each client has different requirements of varying time, cost and scope. For product companies, where [...]
Working with Technical Communicators in an Agile Team
The benefits of getting a Technical Communicator to be part of your agile team In this blog post I discuss how beneficial it can be to work with a Technical Communicator (TC) in your agile team — often known as a Technical Writer, Documentation Specialist, or Content Writer. This post is based on my own [...]
Customer Collaboration with Innovation Games
Photo Credit : Play In Business Market Research in Business Organizations Business Organizations engage in market research to get information about their customers and how their products are faring with the customers. Market research could extend beyond present customers, to potential customers to find information about the buyer’s persona and the target audience. This could [...]
Adaptive Management: Putting it all Together
How to be adaptive as a team and execute for ongoing success! This is the final piece of the adaptive management process I have written about previously. See Setting Up Ways to be Adaptive and Tools and Techniques to be Adaptive for more information. In this blog article, we will look at what all the adaptive [...]
The 14th Annual State of Agile Report is Here
Is your organization practicing or scaling enterprise Agile? The State of Agile report provides the world’s most comprehensive data for benchmarking your Agile practice and planning your next wave of expansion. The 14th annual State of Agile report is based on the experiences of 1,100 IT and business professionals from around the globe. Since its inception, [...]