Lean Agile Culture – Visual Elements – Part 1
“We are following Agile practices because our teams do daily stand-ups. Our teams are working in Sprints and we are very strict about Sprint and Increment planning. So what more should we be doing?”. Sounds familiar? These are some typical responses from managers and leaders when we ask them about their Agile transformation. The Agile […]
Witness-Mind: Gateway to Empathy
We wonder many times why other people don’t understand us, why they are so wrong in their thinking/ideas/ideologies, why they are so insensitive in their behaviors, and so on… Have we considered the possibility that others may be feeling the same about us? This happens because of lack of empathy. We have certain ‘values’ – what we consider […]
Is it time to change the Scrum Master?
There are many discussions going on in the industry on the appropriateness of the word Scrum Master: Why not Agile Master? Is Scrum = Agile? It’s not gender neutral. Would women playing the role be Scrum Mistress? If it’s about mastery, does just a certificate make someone a Master? If this role is Scrum Master, […]
Agile Transformation: Journey on Treadmill
In many Agile Transformation engagements, we notice that Leaders and Managers take a compliance-led approach – mostly due to the past baggage of traditional ways of management style. They try to push the change top-down on to the Teams. This gives a false perception of things moving fast. But they soon stagnate or go back […]
CHOW #219 – A new manager’s dilemma
Raju had joined a large company in its India operations as a director. Raju’s manager, the India operations head had told Raju that he was getting to build a challenging division. A colleague of his Gagan was incubating this unit along with his primary unit. Gagan had transferred the reporting of the team members to […]
Knowledge Era Paradigms – Fundamental rationale behind Agile
If we observe the practices in the Software industry, we can notice that many of them are strongly influenced by the Industrial era experiences. For example, the hierarchical organization structures, management practices, leadership styles, quality management systems etc. still have the legacy of 300 years of industrial influence which are predominantly derived from the mass-production […]
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 […]
Coaching lessons I learnt from watching a movie
I had watched the movie ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’ long ago and forgotten about it until one of my fellow coaches reminded me of it. Now that I was an Agile coach for a while I thought it would be interesting to watch it again. It was really amazing and I thought I had […]
Covid is Driving Agility – How to Surf the Wave?
In a 2015 TED Talk, Bill Gates mentioned that probably the world is more ready to deal with a nuclear war but not ready to deal with an outbreak of Epidemic. Indeed, but unfortunately, Covid-19 is spreading almost like what Bill Gates predicted. It’s spreading worldwide as rapidly as like a software virus. Though much […]
