The agile metrics advice you might not have heard before — If your organization references story points in its performance metrics, then you shouldn’t be using story points. — Cue tilted head and confused look — You read that right. If anything related to story points is part of your performance metrics, you don’t need story points and should stop using…

Get past the rehearsed answers to common interview questions — Do a search on the Internet and you’ll find many lists of the top interview questions and tips on how to answer them. Relying on many of these questions when conducting interviews will provide you with well-rehearsed answers that sound nice, but aren’t necessarily helpful in hiring the best candidates. …

How my annual Christmas rap music video parodies became a thing — Most of us have some sort of family tradition, especially around the holidays. Some we look forward to, some not so much. I’m biased here, but I think my newest tradition is one of the most epic out there. Three years ago, my family started doing Christmas rap music video…

Contrary to popular belief, Agile isn’t always the answer. — A whopping 94% of companies report they are practicing Agile today, according to the 15th State of Agile report. You’re just antiquated in the public eye if you’re not pushing agile everywhere. Despite this notion that Agile is the answer to everything, I believe some organizations are forcing “agile” where…

This question completely changed my outlook on making mistakes. — When I was in tech school (many years ago) and someone in class messed up (sometimes me), we’d get flustered and worried, but Mr. Fields would calmly ask, “So…who died?” His point was we didn’t do anything that can’t be fixed. We are going to make mistakes. Most all of…

Even if you did, it would be a waste of time — Let’s see if you can relate with me on this. You spend an inordinate amount of time meticulously crafting your plan. Something unexpected hits your plan like a tornado and you’re left scrambling to stay on track. To avoid the impact of future disruptions, you spend equal amounts of time…

Accelerate your growth by getting out of the way — Bottom line up front — if you can’t take a month off without your business or team falling apart, you don’t have a business and you don’t have a team. “If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things…

Words matter. Techniques for better product management. — My kids learned early on that words matter. They would ask something like, “can we go to some place?” My response was, “yes.” When they realized that we weren’t going anywhere, they learned that my response wasn’t agreement and their question wasn’t specific enough. They’d try something like, “can we…

Transformation isn’t implemented, it’s cultivated — There are countless articles on the reasons why digital and agile transformations fail, but here’s the problem no one is talking about — we live in an instant-gratification world that seeks to buy and implement our way to success. If we’re being honest with ourselves, transformation success is an anomaly…