15 tips to improve your agility.

Technology, globalization, the environment and society are more closely linked than ever before: Technological advances are driving globalization, changing our environment and influencing society which in turn calls for new solutions to these challenges. This cycle is happening at an increasing pace and is making our world ever more complex. The COVID-19 pandemic is just one current example of a change with complex global consequences.

With all this complexity, we personally feel how difficult it is to keep up with the speed of change. It’s easy to feel lost. …

Technologie, Globalisierung, Umwelt und unsere Gesellschaft sind längst eng miteinander verknüpft: Technologische Fortschritte treiben die Globalisierung voran, verändern unsere Umwelt und beeinflussen unsere Gesellschaft. Diese Entwicklung passiert mit zunehmendem Tempo und macht unsere Welt immer komplexer. Die COVID-19-Pandemie ist dabei nur ein aktuelles Beispiel einer Veränderung mit weltweit komplexen Folgen.

Bei all dieser Komplexität merken wir persönlich, wie es uns immer schwerer fällt, mit dem Ausmaß und der Geschwindigkeit an Veränderungen Schritt zu halten und dabei nicht die Orientierung zu verlieren. Durch unsere Arbeit als Organisationsentwickler erleben wir, wie es vielen anderen Menschen und Unternehmen genauso geht.

Viele suchen daher nach Wegen, besser mit diesen Veränderungen umzugehen, die damit verbundenen Chancen sinnvoller zu nutzen, Risiken optimal zu steuern und damit ihre Wettbewerbsfähigkeit zu sichern. Der Begriff Agilität ist in diesem Zusammenhang in aller Munde. Nun wird das agile Manifest im kommenden Jahr bereits 20 Jahre alt, und Scrum wurde bereits vor 25 Jahren zum ersten Mal vorgestellt. Und dennoch tun sich noch immer viele Menschen und Unternehmen sehr schwer damit, agil(er) zu werden. Diese Beobachtung machen wir nicht nur als Trainer, Coaches und Mentoren, sondern auch als Kunden vieler Unternehmen. …

As long as I can remember, I’ve been curious. As a child, I took things apart just to see how they worked. Luckily for me, my parents encouraged my curiosity, even though I sometimes couldn’t put things back together.

Looking back at how I discovered “agility”, I think it’s that curiosity that helped me embrace and learn about that concept. Discovering things in short plan-do-check-act cycles helped me channel my curiosity, learn more in less time and control the risk of undesirable outcomes — all at the same time.

Being the father of a naturally curious three-year old whom I help discover the world, I rediscovered the importance of curiosity for my own learning journey, our company and of our clients. …

“Can an R&D team of chemists, physicists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and embedded software developers optimize teamwork and value by using Scrum? And can live virtual Scrum training deliver a practical Scrum learning experience to everyone on such a functionally diverse team?”

These were the two questions one of my customers asked.

Throughout our conversation I learned more about the team, and we quickly agreed that their work of applied research and technology development includes lots of complexity. When they start a new initiative, a lot more is unknown than known to them, and only through research, experimentation and development they learn more about what is feasible and applicable. So, being empirical, one of the essential principles of Scrum, is already a big part of their work. At the same time, they were striving to improve focus and self-organization especially in the context of COVID-19 which forced them to distribute and collaborate remotely. So, yes. …

In my last post I used the metaphor of a rowing team to describe the potential implications of having more than one Product Owner per product.

In this post, I’d like to use a similar metaphor to show what might happen if a Development Team member works on more than one team at a time. It’s one of the most asked questions in every Scrum training.

Here’s the metaphor:

Imagine your Scrum Team is the crew of a rowing boat. There’s the person holding the rudder, the people at the oars and the person helping everyone create and maintain rhythm.

The boat is your Scrum Team. The person at the rudder is your Product Owner. …

One of the questions about Scrum I’m often asked is, “Can we have more than one Product Owner [per product]?” In fact, one of the few Scrum rules about the Product Owner role is,

“The Product Owner is one person, not a committee.” (The Scrum Guide)

Instead of responding to the question by simply reciting this rule, I like to use a metaphor to create an understanding of why Scrum requires the Product Owner to be a single person, and why you should require this too:

Imagine that your Scrum Team is a crew of a rowing boat. There are people doing the hard work of rowing, there’s a person who among other things helps these people create and maintain rhythm and then there’s the person holding the rudder. …

We have redesigned our Scrum Framework poster and have made some changes.

Here is an explanation of the elements we have presented differently compared to the Scrum.org poster [1] and the reasons why. If you are looking for a complete description of the Scrum Framework, please read the Scrum Guide [2].

Scrum Events

The Sprint

“The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less” [2]. To emphasize, that in Scrum everything happens within a Sprint, we visualized the Sprint as a gray dotted line surrounding the other Scrum elements. …

Recruiting a Scrum Master is simple and complex. There are plenty of people out there who call themselves “Scrum Masters”, but how do you know if the person you are talking to is a great Scrum Master?

Well, let’s start with the people who do the recruiting. Typically, and especially in large organizations, before a business area gets to see a Scrum Master, they have to go through a formal HR process. The question you then have to ask is, do most recruiters or hiring managers know what to look for in a Scrum Master? How do they know what a great Scrum Master CV is from a bad Scrum Master CV? Does the job advertisement communicate Scrum so that it would excite and attract great Scrum Masters? …