Random Thoughts on Leadership and Life

Stories from helping organizations embrace New Ways of Working
The Irony of Scaling Agile from a Teal Perspective

A friend recently pointed me to a very insightful 2018 post by Sam McAfee where he critically examines the trend of scaling Agile across organizations, drawing attention to the inherent contradictions in these approaches. In the article, McAfee highlighting the paradox of scaling Agile, a way of thinking that thrives on flexibility and adaptability. He...

Five Circumstances that Will Act Like Rocket Fuel for Your Agile Transformation

After coaching several clients on their Agile journey, I have found that establishing certain circumstances improves their chances of success. The following five have an exceedingly massive impact on an Agile transformation initiative’s success or failure odds. 1) CEO support CEO sponsorship is unquestionably the biggest single difference-maker when introducing Agile; if the fairy godmother...

Yesterday, my colleague, Kristian Haugaard (@haugaards), asked on our Ugilic Google hangout; Which book should a mid-level manager new to Agile read during the christmas holidays? My instinctive answer was Scrum for Managers: Management Secrets to Building Agile & Results-Driven Organizations by Rini van Solingen (@solingen) and Rob van Lanen (@robvanlanen). The book is a ‘how to...

I’m passionate about Agile coaching and I’ve therefore decided to write a series of posts on the subject. In this first post I’ll lay the foundation by discussing what an Agile coach does. Agile coaches work at many different levels within organizations. At Ugilic, we differentiate between Transformation Coaches, Team Coaches, and Technical Coaches. Transformation...

One of the discussions I often have with clients is on full-time versus part-time Scrum Masters. Often the arguments against a full-time Scrum Master is related to cost. Typically organizations have one project manager per project and they see it as double the cost having both a dedicated Product Owner and a dedicated Scrum Master on...

On the 4th November, I talked about combining PRINCE2 and Agile (Scrum) at the Nordic Project Zone conference in Copenhagen. The audience consisted primarily of Project Managers and decision makers with a background in traditional project management. I was therefore very excited to see how my ideas on combining traditional project management and Agile, and especially my points about why...

Yesterday the first ever edition of Scrum Day Denmark was held at Microsoft’s headquarters in Hellerup near Copenhagen. The event was hosted and organized by Mads Troels Hansen (@madsth) and Ole Rich Henningsen (@olehenningsen) and Microsoft sponsored food and drinks, making it a free event for the participants. The event was structured much like Scrum Day Europe with a keynote...