Published in GEN·Dec 31, 2021The Hidden Costs of ChildcareLike many parents, I’m guilty of complaining when my daughter interferes with my work life. Whether its needing to pick them up from day care unexpectedly, a routine doctor’s visit, or even if they need to stay home sick and someone needs to look after them… the stress and logistics…Parenting6 min read
Oct 27, 2021Are we killing organizations with continuous improvement?The phrase “continuous improvement” is a pretty common one among agile and lean communities and the tech industry in general. Yet, it depends quite a lot on one’s interpretation of what constitutes an “improvement”. I have started to suspect that in many cases, we are mistaking our societal obsession with…Agile5 min read
Feb 15, 2021Why your Scrum team sucks.In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits he refers to the practice of “environment design” for helping you change your habits. The idea being that your environment plays a big role in whether you succeed or fail in adopting a new habit e.g. …Agile4 min read
Published in Curious·Jan 25, 2021The Struggle to Keep Up: Life as a Working Parent.Firstly, this post is a massive shoutout to all single parents, parents with multiple kids, parents working multiple jobs, working in places with less-than-satisfactory employee rights, living as expats with little or no support network — and generally anyone who needs to look after a dependent while also holding down…Parenting7 min read
Sep 10, 2020The Dark Horse Metric: A Case for Using ThroughputI’ve not come across many teams that use, let alone know that much about throughput. …Throughput6 min read
Jul 29, 2020What are scrum masters and agile coaches accountable for?If you’ve read my article “Scrum Master’s don’t own the process”, you might then ask what exactly are we held to account for? Our profession is sometimes thought of as not having any “skin in the game”. If we are not directly affected by outcomes, then doesn’t that mean we…Accountability3 min read
Jul 28, 2020Lost in Velocity.Shouldn’t we estimate spikes and bugs? What about “ghost work” like time spent on professional growth? Maybe we should re-estimate tasks that we partially completed? What if we associate story points with hours worked? That would make it easier for us to know how many story points to remove when…Velocity6 min read
Jun 11, 2020Scrum Masters don’t own the process.Despite what many job descriptions say these days, as scrum masters or agile coaches, we are not enforcers. We do not own or overtly control the process that our teams use. We are coaches. A revision of the scrum guide in fact now even better reflects this. It went from: …Shu Ha Ri5 min read
Jan 16, 2020Part II: Our love/hate relationship with hierarchiesThis is the second part of a two-part series on our love/ hate relationship with hierarchies. You can read part I here. A #nomanagement movement seems to have taken root because of the failings of hierarchies, and the management style associated with them, in complex environments (see Part I). Now…Hierarchy4 min read
Jan 9, 2020Story Points And The Fallacy of Best PracticeWhile story points are a common method for estimating in software development, the problem is that they are a seemingly difficult concept to grasp. Yet, ironically, because they have become somewhat of a best practice, teams can often be a bit reluctant to try anything else; as if story pointing…Agile4 min read
