An Important But Uncooperative Team Member
The following question was posted to the Ask Anything page. Feel free to ask your own questions here or contribute your thoughts to this question in the comments section below. From: A New Scrum Master...
View ArticleThe Elephant in the Room (A Performance Review Conundrum)
This was a question posted as a reply to the post Make Performance Reviews Meaningful. If you have questions of your own, feel free to reply to any post or submit your question on our Ask Anything...
View ArticleCreating an Environment of Confidence
When I enter an organization as a coach, I often find people (and sometimes whole teams or departments) suffering from low confidence. For individuals, this could stem from being in a new role, a...
View ArticleThe Deliberate Practice of Being Agile
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he discusses the need to deliberately practice for 10,000 hours before becoming an expert in a chosen endeavor. Ten. Thousand. Hours. If all you did for the next...
View ArticlePreparing People for Organizational Change
Organizational change will always be an endless journey and this journey will always be personal and unique. This post from a couple years ago mapped out a possible path people may navigate through an...
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Becoming a Radiating Team
An agile team was recently asked by a manager to prepare and distribute a weekly status report. What is your reaction when you read this? For some, this may seem quite normal. For others, you may need...
View ArticleIs “Protecting the Team” the Right Thing?
If you were to ask a Scrum Master what they do a common response is “we protect the team.” From the context of protecting the team from themselves or an aggressive product owner as Mike Cohn describes,...
View ArticleThe Anatomy of an Impediment
The impediment. As a Scrum Master, you know you are supposed to remove it but how do we even know your team has one? The standard practice is for the Scrum Master to spring into action after a team...
View ArticleHow to Capture Scrum Master Feedback
As a part of the Scrum Master Performance Review series of posts, an emphasis was placed on obtaining feedback for the Scrum Masters reporting to you. Step 5 focused on receiving feedback from the...
View ArticleWhat Agile Feels Like
After many conversations and observations over the past couple of years, it would seem a substantial number of organizations aren’t experiencing a meaningful improvement after a move to Agile. Sure,...
View ArticleSo Different…Yet Very Much the Same
I’m writing this in near total darkness during a planned power outage (called load shedding) in a time zone 7 hours ahead of my home in Chicago. Hang on battery…hang on! It’s been almost 8 weeks since...
View ArticleA Scrum Master Job Description
I have been asked over the past couple of months by a variety of folks to share a template to use when creating a job posting for hiring a Team Agile Coach (or Scrum Master). I’ve had a few versions...
View Article5 Questions to Ask Before Hiring or Promoting an Agile Leader
Your Leadership Legacy Starts Here As a leader in an organization one of your many expectations would be to determine when one of your direct reports are ready to be promoted into a leadership position...
View ArticleScrum Master Resolutions (2016 Edition)
It is hard to believe 2015 is almost over and it’s even harder for me to believe that this blog has been around long enough to have a Scrum Master resolution post for the 5th year in a row. In case...
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2015 – A Year in Review
It is a bit crazy to think we are already in 2016 but before we get too far into the new year here is a quick review of what has been happening at Illustrated Agile in 2015. Thanks to all of the new...
View ArticleShould I Become a Scrum Master?
You Could Be The Spark Your Organization Needs As Agile continues to expand its reach, more and more people are deciding to become a Scrum Master or they are being asked (told) to shift into to the...
View ArticleI’m a Scrum Master…Now What?
The Journey Starts With a Single Step Key Takeaways Your decision to become a Scrum Master triggers the start of a journey to become the catalyst your organization needs. Becoming a first-time Scrum...
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8 Ways to Measure Your Impact as an Agile Coach
Legacy is planting seeds in a garden you will never see grow. – Hamilton, The Musical For those of us who are practicing Agile coaches, you know the truth in this quote. We are often gifted with a...
View ArticleThe Togetherness of Agile
Sometimes, all you need to do is listen. Stop what you are doing for a couple of minutes and just listen. Can you hear it? If you are striving to create a culture of agility, the sound you’re hearing...
View Article4 Insights for an Agile Coach
Earlier this year I started capturing a few insights needed to strengthen the impact of my coaching. It probably started around the New Year as many self-assessments do but it was when I was finishing...
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