The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

The Christmas Tree With One Light Snow fell in soft, quiet sheets over the small town of Willow Glen, covering rooftops and porches with a gentle white blanket. Every house on Maple Street shimmered with lights—blue...

How I Turn Around a Struggling Scrum Team in 90 Days People often assume you can “fix” a struggling Scrum team by tightening ceremonies, updating Jira / Azure Devops, or pushing velocity. It’s a nice idea, but it’s not...

Why Teams Matter More Than Ever for Innovation - Mike Cohn A few years ago, I worked with a product team that was stuck. They were smart, experienced, and deeply committed to building something meaningful. But despite...

The Secret Ingredient Every Agile Team Needs I still remember the sprint retrospective that changed everything. One of our quietest developer, had been silent for three retrospectives straight. But this time, she raised...

5 Agile Project Management Red Flags That Scream “You’re Doomed” 🚩 Red Flag #1: Nobody Knows Who Owns What 🚩 Red Flag #2: The Plan Lives in Someone’s Head 🚩 Red Flag #3: Deadlines Keep Moving… And Nobody Knows Why 🚩...

Light The World - Giving Machines 🌟 The Red Tag That Changed Everything A Short Story Inspired by the “Light the World” Giving Machines Emily had passed the red Giving Machine twice already that afternoon. Once on her...

Definition of Done - More Than Just a Checklist After one too many release debates (and a few emotional retros), I realized the problem wasn’t our process — it was our definition. “Done” meant 10 different things to 10...

We’re doing Scrum. Why does everything take so long to finish? For many teams, delivery bogs down because of the way individuals approach the work itself. Most teams are still working in a sequence: one person finishes...

4 Steps to Building a Product Strategy This is the process I use and have taken dozens of product leaders and founders through to build their product strategy. It’s deliberately designed to be lightweight, flexible but...

Sprint Planning or Sprint Guessing? Welcome to sprint planning — that magical 90-minute meeting (that always becomes 3 hours) where: Developers turn into psychics Product managers become game show hosts Product owners...

The Light on Maple Street — A Holiday Story About Small Acts That Become Everything It started with one string of lights. Maple Street was the kind of block where porches still had rocking chairs and everyone knew which...

So, what does a Project Manager actually do? Ah, the eternal question. What does a PM actually do? Well, most people think it’s the easiest job in the world — after all, you just tell everyone else what to do, right?...

Are You Protecting Your Team Against the Right Thing? - Mike Cohn A lot has been written and said about the responsibility of a Scrum Master to protect the team. Examples of protecting the team typically involve running...

Is Scrum Slowly Taking Away Your Will To Live? On the surface, it sounds innocent, doesn’t it? Cheerful even. Like something British schoolchildren might play on a muddy field before promptly breaking an ankle. But no...

Project Manager vs Product Manager vs Business Analyst You’ve probably heard the terms project manager, product manager, and business analyst tossed around like interchangeable buzzwords. But let’s be honest — most...

The Black Friday That Bought a Neighborhood Back The Bell & Book was a tiny independent bookstore wedged between a dry cleaner and a pawnshop on a corner that hadn’t seen much sparkle in years. Its owner, Marta, had run...

The Thanksgiving Sprint — an AgileDad story It started two years ago in a neighborhood I know well — a mix of veterans, young families, recent transplants, and folks who’d been in the same house so long they remembered...

Can teams pull in more work during a sprint? - Mike Cohn “Can we bring in more work if we’re ahead in a sprint?" It’s one of the most common questions I get from Scrum teams — and honestly, for a long time, I couldn’t...

Most Backlog Management Is Just Organized Procrastination We’ve been told the backlog is how we steer. How we prioritise. How we plan. So we invest hours, maybe days, maintaining it: Refinement sessions Estimation...

What Makes a Great Product Manager? When I first stepped into product management, I had no idea what I was signing up for. I thought it was about building cool features, running a few sprints, and celebrating launch...

A Home That Rebuilt a Life” — the story of Army veteran Sean Karpf After stepping on an IED in Afghanistan, Army Sergeant Sean Karpf faced years of surgeries, rehab, and the long, slow work of rebuilding a life altered...

5 Essential Skills Every Scrum Master Needs Being a Scrum Master isn’t just about booking meetings and quoting the Scrum Guide. It’s about showing up every day as a change agent — the one who helps people work better...

10 Mistakes Enterprises Make When Scaling Agile — and How to Avoid Them When I walk into a Fortune 500 boardroom and hear, “We’ve adopted Agile,” I brace myself. Usually, what follows is a whirlwind of rebranded status...

If You Want Better Stories, Stop Writing Them All Yourself I’ve talked to a lot of product owners who are drowning in tickets, trying to “get ahead” by writing every single user story themselves. I used to be one of...

Velocity = The Most Abused Agile Metric Ever Welcome to the dark side of velocity — the number that started as a planning aid and ended up as a weaponized performance metric, often wielded by people who’ve never touched...