The Power of Team Happy Hours

Today, virtual teams are very common and finding ways to build stronger team bonds has become even more challenging versus direct face to face interaction. One recent team I worked with as an Agile coach started originally working part time from the office (two days a week) and part time from home. Those two days

WFH – How to Master Working From Home

As the Chinese say, “May we live in Interesting Times”.  Considering the Chinese symbol for Crisis and Opportunity are the same, these are definitely interesting times. I’ve had the privilege of working from home since 1995 when I worked for an interactive voice response (IVR) system company called Edify and had setup at my house

A New Way to Manage Your Application Portfolio

There are many fantastic articles on Application Portfolio Management on the Internet. For instance, “How to Rationalize Your Application Portfolio” in CIO.com by Thor Olavsrud and “How to do Software Rationalization Right” by Chris Doig are a keen starting point for justifying Application Portfolio Rationalization (APR) and the process at a high level. As Thor

SAFe Transformation in Consulting

Per Version One’s Thirteenth Annual State of Agile Report, Scaled Agile Framework is the current dominant leader in Scaling Agile frameworks with 30% overall adoption within the industry.  With over 500,000 trained individuals, SAFe has  definitely made an impression within product and solution delivery. There are many case studies on Scaled Agile’s website regarding the

Choosing Methodologies

These days, most professionals have a few, if not several experts in their profession they follow with blogs, LinkedIn articles, tweets and any publications they make.  Outside of that, when a particular need arises, most use the typical search engine of choice to find all relevant topics to get a sufficient answer in the shortest

Technical Debt

Technical Debt There are three primary types of technical debt: naïve, unavoidable and strategic.  The naïve technical debt occurs due to lack of experience or foresight, thereby resulting in poorly built software. Unavoidable technical debt deals with improvements of tools and design patterns that can’t be utilized today, but will be available in the future. 

Risk Burn Down Chart

In my December blog, I covered the “Art of Risk Analysis” which skimmed over the idea of a risk burn down chart.  One of my main points is that risk review is a continuous process that should be checked on a frequent basis.  For larger projects where there are several risks, having a risk burn

Leading Indicators in Agile

Often in the world of project management, even the most experienced project managers occasionally get caught with their “pants down”.  How does that happen to even the best leaders?  Usually it involves people and their lack of communication within and beyond the team. So how does a project manager minimize the odds of getting surprised? 

The Art of Risk Analysis

I’ve been involved in delivering projects for over twenty years now and during that time have seen the good, the bad and the ugly.  Stories of the good are sometimes brought up as “feathers in one’s cap”, the bad ones tend to be reminders of how challenging delivering projects when people, process and technology are

Agile is a Tool Box… and a Very Huge One at That!

Consider modern Agile as a delivery philosophy.  Here’s my hypothesis.  Agile is an approach on selecting the best tools for your culture and product.  No one set of tools or even approaches will work “best” for any given engagement. If you don’t agree, then don’t and you can stop reading now.  It won’t hurt my