CHOW #212 – Coach as a Problem Solver?!
You are an Agile coach, a new recruit in the organization – a Global In-house Center (“captive” software arm) of a major financial services organization. Prior to this job, you have been a Scrum Master and a coach for over five years in a fin-tech product organization and before that a Project Manager in the […]
CHOW #211 – Data-driven Coaching Plan
Challenge The names, characters, dialects, and phrases are imaginary. Yesterday, I was one among the spectators, to an event performed at the local stadium. The event may appear to have a certain resemblance to a competition for the first-time visitor. But it was strictly not a competition. Professionals from different disciplines demonstrated their talents. Every […]
CHOW #210 – Culture Shock!
Mike Wallace is a recently-promoted Scrum Master for a project team. He has taken over when the team had been struggling with low Say/Do ratio and highly-fluctuating velocity. Mike and his team had gone into the causes for this situation in the past and incorporated various measures within the development team, with the PO in […]
CHOW #209 – The hares and the rabbits
The situation “So, you are saying that the main problem with productivity measurements like velocity is that, story points, the basis on which these velocities are measured against, cannot be trusted…” “Yes. Mainly because there are no standards for story points. It is actually a relative measurement. And the main focus of velocity measurements based […]
CHOW #208 – The mother crab and the baby crab
The Situation TheGeneral manager and VP of an important division is talking to their coach: “Oneof our customers, a very important one, had some issue with his product. One ofour engineers in the development group suggested a radical approach to solvethe issue. But I wanted a proper analysis done to understand the pros and consof […]
CHOW #207 – The king who did not listen
The Situation Charles Wesley Griffith-Hall was the CEO of the largest financial institution in the world. One day he had gone to the bathroom, and while there, he met the VP of new products and started talking about what innovative ideas were on the horizon. While they were at it, the janitor of who was […]
CHOW #206 – The king who always worked
The situation Vishnusharman said, “Mohammed, remember when we were previously talking about individual goals and team goals, you mentioned how conflicts can arise when a person’s personal, outside of work, goals conflict with team goals? Chitraa and I were just talking about the late-night working of people. Did this create some resentment in people?” “Maybe […]
CHOW #205 – The cat-tying ritual
The situation “Your organisation is using Scrum for software development, right? You must have heard of Scrum ceremonies like the daily scrum or the daily stand-up. Now, the Scrum Guide recommends three questions – what did you accomplish, what will you accomplish and any impediments – to which each person must give their status. However, […]
Challenge of the Week (CHOW # 204) – Climbing the ladder of inference
Raju Kulkarni, Scrum Master, sat in his Pune office fuming about the attitude of his onsite Product Owner, Nigella White located in Seattle. Nigella had many teams like Raju’s in Dublin in addition to Pune. She had just joined the organization and had relocated from London, U.K. She had very good credentials, knowledge of Scrum, […]
CHOW #203 – Scrum Team Struggle to get their Increment Done
The Scrum Team that I was coaching, during a time were repeatedly struggling to finish the items that they have taken up for a sprint. They could not meet their sprint goal. They repeatedly failed to create a product increment. This was discussed in the retrospective, and team brought up various blocks and surprises which […]
