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The Worst Estimate I Ever Gave
A Retrospective One of my first experiences as a team coach was to help the developers work with a stakeholder they found difficult because the stakeholder would constantly shift priorities and demand “more” to be delivered. There was a specific demand for all tasks...
Our summer of Covid
I don’t want to be the millionth person to tell you that times are “unprecedented” -- but, just like every single professional reading this, I’ve been busy navigating what my new normal would become. It’s been challenging, to say the least. I’ve had to discover new...
Insights From My Journey into Scrum
Reflections on 3 Years as a “Scrum” Master and Scrum Master.
Dance Of The Scrum Master – Ask Don’t Tell
I recently attended an Advanced Scrum Master Certification course facilitated by Evolve Agility. I have been working on scrum teams for about fourteen years. Over the years I have been a development team member, scrum master, product owner and scrum coach. I consider...
Healthy Product Backlogs
Healthy Product Backlog: Customer immediately understands every item in the product backlog. These are commonly useful good practices to get your product backlog in healthy state. Try these, your mileage may vary: (1) Customer goal oriented product backlog items....
Coaching Smells
“Hi, I’m a coach and I am here to help” My spine stiffens and I can feel my hair on back of my neck. “Thanks, K” I respond tepidly K: “I have been promoted, I am now your coach. I will do what it takes to help your team” Me: “we need all the help we can get” ‘When...
Hierarchical Amplification
Consider one of your peers or subordinates or juniors some one at the same level as yours or below. Lets name him Jerry. Next time Jerry or some one like him/her requests for a non-trivial action from you, reflect on how your thinking, processes this ask. It is my...
Afternoon ScrumMaster
Context explains a lot of our behavior. This is a most intriguing case, that I feel I can now retell. For much time has passed by and my metaphorical obfuscation will protect the innocent. In the warm summer months of August, I was engaged to a...
Virtual Parkbench
For large distributed retrospectives, where participants in the retrospective are in different cities, I have created a variation of popular group discussion technique called as “Park Bench”. Some Background: I was coaching within a large organization with different...