The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

Be Here Now - Mike Cohn

One of my favorite books is one I’ve never completely read. It’s called Be Here Now. A friend’s older brother was reading it when I was 10. He let me page through his copy.
The book caught my attention because it was square, an unusual shape for a book. Many of the pages inside the book were hand-lettered and illustrated.
I next came across the book when I was a college freshman. I read part of it then ...

A Vision Should Be Actionable

Most companies have a vision statement. Few have a vision that actually matters.

Too often, a vision ends up as a vague slogan on a PowerPoint slide or painted on the office wall. Inspiring? Maybe. Useful? Rarely.

But a real vision isn’t decoration. A real vision is a service.

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When to Synchronize Sprints

Synchronizing sprints isn’t about control, it’s about rhythm.
And knowing when to bring teams into sync is what separates “we’re delivering together” from “we’re just drowning together.”

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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, gold, red, and green—each one competing to outshine the next.

Every house… except one.

At the corner of the street stood Mrs. Alder’s home, dim and silent.
No garland.
No wreath.
No warmth in the windows.

Only a s...

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 real. Teams don’t turn around because you run cleaner standups. They turn around because the system around them becomes clearer, more aligned, and more stable.

After coaching and leading delivery teams across banks, te...

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 their talent, their work felt...flat. They were completing tasks, but they weren’t creating anything truly innovative. They weren’t challenging each other’s thinking. They weren’t imagining possibilities beyond the ...

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 her hand. “I think our deployment process is broken,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “And I have an idea to fix it.”

The room went quiet.
In my previous teams, this would have been the moment when so...

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

🚩 Red Flag #4: Meetings = Group Therapy

🚩 Red Flag #5: “We Don’t Have Time” for Risks

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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 way into the mall for Christmas shopping, once again as she hurried out with bags on both arms. People were gathered around it—smiling, taking turns, scanning cards. It looked like a vending machine, but instead of candy...

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 different people.
Developers meant “code merged”.
QA meant “tests passed”.
Product meant “feature shipped”.
Ops meant “logs don’t scream”.

So I built a checklist — not to create bureaucracy, but to creat...

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 their part, hands it off, and then the next person begins. Designers wait for analysis to finish. Developers wait for designs. Testers wait for the code to be done. Everyone’s optimizing for their own efficienc...

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 not a checklist.

This means there’s a lot of work that you still need to do. Rather than trying to ask you to fill-in-the-blanks like “what’s your unique value prop” or “target customer” you’re going to have to do the w...

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 stare into a backlog like it’s a crystal ball

Sound familiar?

For many Agile teams, sprint planning isn’t the crisp, focused ritual described in books. It’s often more ambiguous, chaotic, and filled with guessing t...

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 mailboxes belonged to which dog. In late November, between the first frost and the rush of the season, the Wilsons put up a single strand of blue bulbs across their porch. They’d just lost a little money that month — ...

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?

Sure, if you also enjoy being the middle child in a family of stress-addicted workaholics with a taste for crises.

In the last decade or so, I’ve worked in everything from Fortune 500 companies (you know, those lovely corp...

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 interference with well-meaning but overzealous product owners, stakeholders, and managers. Teams run into trouble all the time from people who want it all now or who keep adding more work in the middle or a sprint...

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. In reality, Scrum is a framework for managing work in software development, and it is somehow both wildly popular and completely misunderstood by… well, almost everyone.

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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 posts explaining these roles either put you to sleep or leave you more confused than before.

So let’s break it down properly.

No jargon. No textbook talk. Just real, human language.

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