I often teach Agile to people who have nothing to do with software development, such as leadership teams or organisations that operate entirely outside of the digital world. In this context I only teach the Modern Agile values (read more about the modern agile movement at modernagile.org)....

There is a lot of talk right now about how agile product delivery teams should take ownership of customer discovery work, alongside their development activities. This is otherwise known as ‘dual-track development’ and is described in Jeff Patton’s excellent article In this blog I want to talk throug...

Understanding ‘why’ you do agile is important, and the agile manifesto is one of the first things we cover on any Agile Professional Foundation course. I have, however, found the wordiness of some of the principles a little daunting and let’s face it the website does look a bit like my Nan’s wallpap...

This is the second year we have organised JAFAC (Just Another F#$%ng Agile Conference) and as I’m slowly coming down from the buzz and enthusiasm I’m reflecting upon the experience of organising and attending the conference. Here are a few things that stood out for me: 1. The #JAFAC vibe Several att...

Role Expectation Mapping is a process described by the awesome Jimmy Janlén designed to aid collaboration and help a team work through mismatches in understanding of each other’s roles. I came across Jimmy's article recently when working with a small team who were struggling with what they could and...

It’s a funny thing, the Agile world. Globally accepted as the right and logical way to do things most of the time, it is still pretty much in the ramping up phase in Aotearoa. Nomad8 started out in 2007 as a group of people who loved Agile and who wanted to share that love with people and organisati...

The retrospective ended with two team members storming out of the room in opposite directions, two others toe-to-toe in heated dispute and Leah, the Product Owner handing out orders to whoever would listen. I started to realise how stuck this team actually was... Over the few previous days I’d witne...

Picture the scene: Your team is regularly coming together to focus on improving how they work but the same overarching problems seem to be the root cause every time. Worse still, these issues are perceived as being outside the direct control of the team. Your instinct and experience tell you that al...

This post was originally published in Methods & Tools magazine as Breaking Bad: The cult of not giving bad news. I have updated it since then and re-published here as I have collected more learnings since then. It stemmed from something I kept observing, which really bothered me; why is it so ha...

Kanbanfor1 gives you a simple visual overview of your to do list. It helps you keep an eye on your progress and get visibility over what you’re actually achieving—helping you to work more efficiently and become better organised. As a productivity tool Kanbanfor1 is great on its own—but it becomes tr...

As Agilists, our principles and values underpin the way we work and decisions we make. A good principle should be timeless and non-prescriptive enough to be valid across many contexts, but specific enough to add practical value and help us make decisions. I feel that one Agile Manifesto principle in...

How you kick-off a team is important! In fact it’s so important, that when you get it right your team can perform up to 30% better. That's what research by J. Richard Hackman tells us and it’s certainly consistent with my own observations. What exactly is a kick-off? A kick-off is a series of meetin...

Recently a friend of mine formed a startup with a goal of making the One-On-One Meeting an easier and more valuable process. Their aim was to help managers and their direct reports easier handle the goals and issues that arise from these sessions. The assumption they made was that their customers (p...

David and I were super excited to head to Agile2016 in Atlanta. We had a really great five days: catching up with old friends, making new acquaintances and eating Atlanta's "streetest" BBQ! A new phase for New Zealand’s Agile community Shane Hastie and I signed the papers to establish the Agile Alli...

I've never met someone who doesn’t have a problem managing their time. We all wish there were more hours in the day! While we can’t add extra hours to the day, we can find ways to be more effective with the time we have. Experience and research show that the best way to do this is to: stop multi-ta...

This year's Agile Australia conference was an absolute blast! I loved having the opportunity to catch up with old friends, hang out with my Australian coaching colleagues and to meet new and interesting people. David Mole and Sandy Mamoli gave a talk on self-selection and creating great teams in Mel...