On-demand Agile Leadership & Business Agility training
Agile leaders thrive in times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Tough times buil…
How Agility has Moved Outside the IT Industry and is Shaping Top Companies Around the World
For many, the mention of the word agile conjures up images of software engineers, stickie notes…
6 Proven Ways to Make your Organization More Agile
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries organizations saw great leaps forwards in t…
The 6 Enablers of Business Agility – Creating the Organizational Operating system for Success
We live in a world that is more interconnected, more volatile, and more unpredictable than at a…
5 Levers for Changing Organisational Culture
Organisational culture is one of the most powerful, and misunderstood, concepts around. Leaders and …
On Agile & Mastery
I’m lucky enough to find my job professionally satisfying. That’s because I think that the line of w…
Creating Alignment and Autonomy
We know from Dan Pink’s work that high levels of autonomy are a powerful contributor to motivation. …
There Are Sabre-Toothed Tigers in Your Office
An ancient part of our brains that existed to keep us alive in a world of danger has evolved. But ra…
The SCARF Model – How it affects agile teams
In the post ‘There Are Sabre-Toothed Tigers In Your Office‘, we discussed how our brains…
Agile Coaching Capability
I’m a bit of a rugby fan and often find myself wanting to run out with the lads, moving through the …
Innovation versus Protectionism
The last time we suffered a global pandemic that brought the world to its knees was in 1918. A littl…
I’m in a Theory X Team, Get Me Out Of Here!
For 20 years, ITV’s “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” has been a staple of the UK pre-Christmas …
Where did you get that hat?
In my previous blog post “Where are all the managers in Agile?”, I discussed why agile doesn’t need …
Where are all the managers in Agile?
The heart of agile is described in the few words of the Agile Manifesto and its accompanying princip…
Bring rigour to your thinking
“Belief is so often the death of reason” – Lord Varys, Master of Whisperers – Game of Thrones …
Covid Hack – Intention Versus Strategy
Small, cross-functional teams working closely together to frequently and consistently deliver featur…
The History of Hierarchies
For 95 percent of the 200,000 years modern humans have walked the earth, there was no such thing as …
Covid Hack – Resilient versus Robust
Many of the corporations we work with are inherently designed to be robust. A concept that permeates…
Covid Hacks – Hiring
In a recent Zoom session with Laura Howie, CEO of Reel Media Africa, we chatted about the importance…
Management versus Leadership
5 Weeks ago, our revenue streams dried up, literally overnight. The Covid-19 fairy waltzed in the fr…
The Coaching Imposter #2
When I last posted something, before life changed significantly for all of us, I was coming to terms…
Customers and Developers in the same room. WTF?
At the turn of the 20th Century, the father of modern Business Management – Frederick Winslow …
First they ignore you
‘How do I get the senior leadership team to buy into Agile?’ is a question I’m often asked. It’s a g…
We didn’t do anything wrong
‘We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.’ – CEO of Nokia There’s a moment where the CEO o…
Building bridges amidst disruption
The Case for Business Agility As an Agile coach, consultant and trainer, I pretty much live in a wor…
Coronavirus and The Corner Shop – A Portrait of Agility?
If ever one wanted the ultimate portrait of a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex, and a…
Exploring & Exploiting: Striking the Right Balance
In 1913, Henry Ford implemented one of the greatest innovations ever seen in manufacturing: the movi…
Agile Bootcamp #4 – Using Story Mapping to Teach Agile
User Story Mapping is a great technique to help teams explore their product scope and plan how they …
Agile Bootcamp #2 – Behind The Scenes at an Agile Bootcamp
The bootcamp is planned, the travel arrangements made and suitcases packed. Now, the hard work start…
The opportunity of IR35 for organisations and start-ups
The recent announcement from HMRC that IR35 and Off-Payroll Tax would come into effect on the 6th of…
Meteors, VUCA, and Business Agility
Once upon a time, two-ton wombats lumbered across the Australian Outback. Around the same time, sabr…
The 6 Enablers of Business Agility
When I first started my journey as a Scrum Master, I devoured books on how Scrum worked. I le…
Agile Project Management
To say the words ‘Agile Project Management’ in front of Agile purists falls somewhere in the spectru…
What is Project Management?
Project Management, as both a profession and specialised discipline, is relatively young. From the d…
Don’t look back in anger
Continuous improvement is a core agile principle. The retrospective is an important event in all agi…
Ethics and morals
Anyone whose profession involves advising others needs to be concerned about ethics. In a more gener…
Metaphor, Simile and Analogies
Communication in all its aspects is of vital importance to effective coaching. Getting the most out …
Body Language
As important as the spoken word is, body language may convey even more information than speech. As a…
The Trust Equation
Trust relationships are vital to the way we do business today. In fact, the level of trust present i…
Introducing Certified Agile Leadership® (CAL1)
Throughout my years as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach and Scrum trainer, there has been a common and pe…
Active Listening
Active listening is a communication technique that requires the listener to feed back what he or she…
Levels of Listening
For a coach, there can surely be few skills more important than listening. Hearing what your client …
The GROW Model Explained
The GROW model is a solid, time-tested coaching tool that can help coaches ensure efficient results …
What do Agile and Electricity have in Common?
In February, it will be 17 years since the writing of the Agile Manifesto. Much was, and still is, p…
The Responsibility Process® in Action
Recently I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days with Christopher Avery renewing my practice of…
Enterprise Scrum as a Language of Choices
The purpose of Enterprise Scrum is to give organisations the ability to become more resilient i…
The Productivity Myth
I am often asked if using Scrum can make software developers more productive. My response is always …
No Framework Will Save You
It is often said, by those in the personal training industry, that you cannot out-train a bad diet. …
LeSS is More
It’s the age old debate. ‘I want self-organising teams, but I need to set some constraints. I …
A People Business
Let’s face it: People skills is not an area in which the software development community has traditio…
Being the change you want to see — in the office.
Gandhi didn’t say, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” But the sentiment, whoever first ex…
We all know what kindness is, surely?
There’s no end of well-intentioned articles about feelings and conduct on the internet. We have all …
Who’s responsible here?
I talk to many people about the concept of responsibility at work, especially as so few people see i…
Earning trust the other way
We learn from an early age that to earn trust you need to show you’re trustworthy. It is earne…
Role retrospectives
I’ve been at my current client for roughly a month. The role isn’t that clear but I̵…