The Risk of Overemphasizing RisksWe are trained to identify and evaluate risks. This prevents teams from making decisions that are unlikely to work, saving time and money and helping the team move forward. However, a risk-avoidance mindset can also stop progress. Successful agile teams see risks as ways of starting a conversation, not stopping it.
Mob Programming: Working Well TogetherMob programming is a whole-team approach to creating software where everyone works together on the same thing at the same computer. It's not a bunch of people watching one person write code, but rather everyone thinking, discussing, designing, and collaborating. Sound crazy? Here's how it improves the quality of code.
Refining Your Scrum Planning MeetingsScrum events are meant to be productive opportunities for collaboration that replace more tedious, wasteful meetings. If you find your planning meetings becoming passive events where no one is asking questions or actively seeking to understand the backlog, the problem might be in the execution or the preparation.
5 Pitfalls Agile Coaches Must AvoidSuccessful agile teams often have a coach driving continuous improvement. While some coaches are effective initially, many eventually succumb to pitfalls that inhibit their team’s growth and fail to compel any lasting changes. Here are five common pitfalls of agile coaches in most projects that fail to improve.
The Importance of Goal Alignment in Agile and DevOpsFor agile and DevOps teams to succeed, there must be a common vision that strives for detailed customer-focused outcomes. There’s never a magic bullet to address goal misalignment, as the challenges are context-specific, but here are some approaches that help move organizations and teams toward better alignment.
3 Telltale Signs You’re Scaling Agile Too QuicklyWhen an organization grows quickly, it puts stress on people, processes, and customers. Burnout happens, things fall through the cracks, and defects creep in. Unfortunately, many organizations try to scale agile too quickly, and that often leads to failure. Here are three of the telltale signs you're scaling too fast.
Building a Culture of Continuous ImprovementA culture of continuous improvement means you are open to improving how you build and deliver. You don't accept the status quo; you choose how to work and feel empowered to change it if it no longer makes sense. Kevin Goldsmith gives some ideas for frameworks to adopt in order to move toward this people-first culture.
4 Impediments to Nurturing a Feedback-Rich CultureBeing able to have open, candid conversations that fuel learning, growth, and improvement is critical to a team’s success, so it is important to look out for impediments that can get in the way of having a feedback-rich culture. Here are four common impediments to watch for, as well as behaviors you should nurture.
