CHOW #136 – Resistance to Improvement
Ram, a Test Lead, had been working for eTravel for the last three years. eTravel has a cloud-based product for frequent business travellers. When his organization decided to adopt agile practices two years ago, he chose to take on the Scrum Master role. The feature team, that he was part of as SM, had the […]
CHOW #135: Weigh in on some weighty Agile questions!
In PM Power’s Enterprise Agile Transformation practice, customers – either starting on Agile adoption or reviewing their current state – often ask us questions like the ones below. What would be your answers for them? You can answer as many as you like – at least one if not all 3! Ask shiv@pm-powerconsulting.com for what […]
Does Agile work for package implementations?
Does Agile work for implementations of packages such as SAP, Oracle and others? This question has been asked many times in the light of some spectacular implementation failures – failures of such magnitude that organizations have gone bankrupt. The question is whether the water-fallish implementation approaches – often the prescribed methodology of the package provider […]
CHOW #134 – Individual Discipline in Agile
“Yes. Individual discipline is a key component of an Agile organisation. I will tell you why…” Why and how is individual discipline a key component of an Agile organisation? Can you discuss this in terms of the Agile principles of Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools, Responding to Change over Following a Plan, Simplicity? […]
Mindfulness for Agile Culture and Mindset – Extract from our upcoming book
This blog post is an extract from our upcoming book on organisational agility. The objective of the book is to help leaders, managers and change agents (including internal and external agile coaches) involved in organizational agile transformations and project / program managers, scrum masters and team members address the concerns of IT organizations as they try […]
CHOW #133 – Standardization – one size fits all
Sharma is a metrics-oriented Head of an IT function. Prior to adopting agile, his organization used Function Point (FP) method for measuring software size. Along with the effort data entered by individuals, teams measured productivity factor as FP per person day of effort. This data was used for estimating new project effort as well as […]
CHOW #132 – Agile Manager?
Suma is a Scrum Master for a team of 8 people who are using 2 week Sprint consistently. Suma reports to Arun, a demanding manager, who has 5 other Teams of similar size who are using different Sprint durations. Arun had been engaging an Agile Coach for his unit of 55 people for the last […]
Agile Leaders are missing Gold
As I have been involved in Agile transformation coaching in several organizations over many years, I have been noticing one pattern: Most organizations have been moving from one framework/model to another, say Scrum, LeSS, SAFe, Spotify and so on; but there is not enough change in mindset, behavior, culture towards Agility. They are doing Agile […]
The Accidental Manager
(These statements are strictly personal and are not those of any Company or Organization) By my nature I am a very competitive person. I love to win. At school I would compete for grades, in sport I had to win – second was the fastest loser, on my way home on my bike I would […]
CHOW # 131 – Sizing stories right…what you appreciate is what you get
One of the Agile Scrum teams that I was coaching Agile Artisans was doing pretty well and I felt had matured enough to be on their own. I was paying less attention to them. They had achieved a good velocity in the recent completed Sprint 14. it was quite high compared to their past velocity. […]
