Teams are only as effective as the system in which they operate. So when teams are struggling to execute, it’s worth taking a step back to understand the systemic challenges. Strategy and execution may seem relatively independent of one another, but in fact they are heavily interdependent. Recently I put…

Introduction I often feel in the agile world we have a tendency to work solution-first — even whilst we coach others to do the opposite. This solution-first approach is driven as much by businesses as it is by us as individuals. Businesses will often hire agile coaches/scum masters to “do” rather…

Cross-functional (XFN) teams can seem counter-intuitive. Why? Because we’ve become institutionalised to think that businesses should be organised by function. But cross functional teams are more common sense than crazy. Here’s why. Last year I supported a company to adopt a fully XFN model. They already had XFN product and…

I recently posted about this on LinkedIn, and it proved surprisingly popular. So I thought I’d share it here, together with some of the discussions the post generated. Recently I’ve read books about Amazon (Working Backwards), Google (How Google Works) and Netflix (No Rules Rules). I consider them to be…

Introduction I recently wrote about the limitations of the Agile Manifesto when adopting agile. Following on from that I thought I would look at the limitations of agile methodologies, and discuss why guardrails prove an alternative — or complimentary — approach to putting agile software delivery into practice. The Limitations of Methodologies Agile adoption tends…

The agile manifesto is arguably the most unhelpful document in the history of technology. There. I’ve said it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with anything it says, and I’m grateful that it challenged conventional methods of software delivery. Not to mention which, it has triggered a much needed…

Introduction No, the title isn’t just clickbait, it’s a serious question. Early in my agile career I attended a meet-up where the speaker observed that “No-one is allowed to criticise agile, so it never gets any better”. Ironic eh? So in the spirit of continuous improvement, I’m going to plough on…

Introduction Speed and the challenges of scaling The inevitable challenge that all successful start-ups face is the need to scale effectively. There are many elements to this, one of which is how to stay agile at scale. In a small company of 10, 20, 30 people, agility comes naturally. It gets much harder to maintain this speed…

Introduction Speed and the challenges of scaling The inevitable challenge that all successful start-ups face is the need to scale effectively. There are many elements to this, one of which is how to stay agile at scale. In a small company of 10, 20, 30 people, agility comes naturally. It gets much harder to maintain this speed…