All major agile implementations require guidance and leadership to establish new processes and practices. This talk discusses a highly effective strategy for  ​ ​managing ​ ​ that change by using something familiar, but in a slightly new way. Slideshow for a presentation given on Aug 2, 2019 to the Austin Agile Leadership SIG.   (Fil...

In all organizations of any size there is a need to manage the work of the organization and guide the efforts of the people involved in the work. Traditionally, in larger organizations, this guidance was organized under the title of Project Management Office, or PMO. The PMO usually consisted of senior project managers, along with some represe...

Introduction  Thanks for sticking with us through this three part series on SAFe backlogs! We've finally arrived at the final portion, where we'll be talking about the actual work items themselves. To date we've gotten a good look at the "lay of the land" and seen where all of the SAFe backlogs exist, as well as taken a deeper look at how they...

The Hierarchy  This section may seem like its coming out of order; shouldn't we cover the specifics of each work item before we talk about their organizational structure? Maybe, but I'm coming at the topic in this sequence because I believe that where these work items sit in the Big Picture is such a huge part of understanding what they are. W...

​When I am working with a client who is new to the Scaled Agile framework, or I'm delivering a training course for soon-to-be agilists, there's always a large number of questions about how the SAFe backlogs and work items relate to each other. These questions are understandable when you look over the Big Picture and see all of the different element...

Agile lessons from the good Dr? Sure, why not? He wasn’t specifically writing for agile folks but there are lessons there… if you know where to look.