How to define purpose for an Agile team? A practical guide to defining purpose and aligning with your organization’s goals

As a Scrum Master, we are often worried about what goes on with the teams we work with. We care about the people. We help the team communicate, collaborate so that they can achieve the team’s goals. However, we often don’t work on a larger goal: the goal of the organization that needs that team. …

Coming out of the closet – the life and adventure of a traditional project manager turned Agilist

I’m coming out of the closet today. No, not that closet. Another closet, the tabu closet in the Agile community. Yes, I was (and to a point still am) a control freak, traditional, command and control project manager. Yes, that’s right you read it correctly. Here’s why this is important: in 2003 when I first …

Hire generalists to help your specialists shine!

Imagine you are developing a highly-specialized embedded software product. Like a radio tower for the GSM/UMTS network, or a high-frequency trading back-end for a large New York trading firm. Why would you want to have generalists in that team? After all, these are niche-niche-niche products. Maybe a few thousand people work on these projects in …