Agile Denver Session Notes: Unscaling
Update: For our latest thinking on scaling and organizational agility see Scaling: Principles not Practices. For those who attended last night’s Agile Denver meetup, here are…
Author: Richard Lawrence
Longtime co-owner of Agile For All, Richard left in October 2020 to co-found Humanizing Work.He trains and coaches people to collaborate more effectively with other people to solve complex, meaningful problems. He draws on a diverse background in software development, engineering, anthropology, and political science. Richard is a Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer, as well as a certified trainer of the accelerated learning method, Training from the Back of the Room. His book, Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber, was published by Addison-Wesley in 2019 (for more information, visit bddwithcucumber.com).
Scrum Basics: When Should We Schedule Sprint Transitions?
We’re often asked which day or days are best for scheduling the Sprint Planning, Review, and Retrospective meetings.
Org Structure, Software Architecture, and Cross-functional Teams
Some 46 years ago, Melvin Conway wrote, “Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of…
MHA 2014 Session Notes: Models for Support
For those who attended my Mile High Agile 2014 session, Models for Support, here are the photos of the flip charts (with a little explanatory…
Taking Agile Beyond Software
Two years ago, when Bob and I merged our companies into today’s Agile For All, we wrote out a vision statement for the company that…
The Agile For All Christmas Party & Four Charities We’re Fired Up About This Christmas
In November, we asked our wives, Dawn Lawrence and Carol Hartman (whom many of you met at the conference), to plan a unique company Christmas…
3 Ways to Handle End-of-the-Year Holidays on Your Agile Team
The period from mid-December to early-January can be disruptive for an agile team. You’re used to working on a regular cadence, maybe in 2-week iterations.…
Humanizing Work 2013 Conference Recap
Last month’s Humanizing Work Conference was organized around one big hypothesis: that it was possible to do to a conference what we’d done to our…
Focusing on the Right Things in Your Daily Scrum
“Yesterday, I was in Sprint Planning…” I hear it once, and I’m suspicious. By the time the third team member says this, it’s clear the…
Agile Homeschool
My wife and I have been homeschooling our 3 boys since our oldest, who turns 13 tomorrow, started kindergarten. From the beginning, we’ve tried to…
Change Happens—So Make it Cheaper
Change on software projects is expensive; it leads to wasteful rework. Change is risk. We can deal with risk one of two ways. We can…
Splitting Stories in Spanish (or, Como Dividir una Historia de Usuario)
Thanks to Joserra Díaz for the translation (with feedback from Matin Alaimo and Alan Cyment).
Story Splitting in Russian (or, Как Разделять Истории Пользователей)
Thanks to Alexander Lutsaevsky for the translation.
Splitting Stories in French (or, Comment découper un récit utilisateur)
Thanks to Jean-Jacques Lévesque, my “How to Split a User Story” poster is now available in French.
Functional Managers in Agile
As an organization transforms to an agile way of working, functional managers (e.g. a dev manager or a test manager) can feel lost. Many of…
Splitting Stories in German (or, User Stories Aufteilen)
Thanks to translation from Kai Simons, my “How to Split a User Story” flowchart is now available in German.
New Story Splitting Resource
More than two years after I originally published it, “Patterns for Splitting User Stories” remains one of the most visited posts on my blog. Splitting…
Coaching Surgeons, Cyclists, and Software Teams
Atul Gawande is a surgeon and author who has written some excellent books and New Yorker articles reflecting on the state of modern medicine. Recently,…
Cucumber Tip: IRB From Inside a Step Definition
Most Ruby programmers know about Ruby’s interactive console, IRB. (If you don’t, stop right here, open up a command window and run irb. Type some…
Building a Useful Task Board
The task board is a simple, yet powerful, tool for Scrum teams. As a coach, I can tell a lot about a team just by…