The Importance of Making Priorities Transparent

Au Cheval Burger

This Tuesday our Responsive Advisors team visited Au Cheval, a popular burger restaurant in Chicago. In April of 2016, I visited Au Cheval for the first time with Robb, and I wrote this blog post about it on my personal blog. I thought this post was worth sharing in honor of our first team visit to…

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Increase Your Agility with One Product Owner

product ownership requires vision

This post is part of the Scrum Whys blog series. “A product owner can be a member of only one Scrum team” “A product owner must compose every user story” “A product owner creates all of the requirements for a development team” “A product owner is the only person that should talk to our customers”…

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5 ways an agile team manager can improve velocity

Velocity

A common question we hear from managers and senior leaders is how they can improve the velocity of their development teams. Many agile professionals redirect that manager’s attention to attributes other than output, commonly toward value, because they assume the wrong question is being asked. I totally agree one has to examine the value a…

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Don’t Assimilate, Resist the Status Quo

not business as usual1

I once worked for an organization with many opportunities for improvement. To be honest, it was a mess. It didn’t take long to realize that the organization had implemented many dysfunctional practices and policies that were ingrained into the culture. There were many problems surrounding software development practices, project requirements gathering, and deployment of finished…

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Split Prioritization Disorder

Turn signals

I recently discovered a disorder that has affected many organizations. This disorder often begins quietly, starting slowly in some areas of an organization and spreading quickly throughout. Soon an entire organization suffers from it and is paralyzed by an inability to get work done. Common Symptoms Frequent complaints of too many meetings Work progressing slowly A…

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