Do you feel like your teams could be organized better? How to organize teams in an optimal way is a common question in Agile organizations. A question you should always discuss and answer together with the people in the actual teams.

This post provides you with an overview of 5 possibilities for organizing teams and the main factors to take into account. Your main considerations should be based on product complexity and maturity, as well responsibility, coordination efforts and sustainability. Depending on your specific context one will suit your situation better than the other, or maybe you will come to the conclusion you are so Agile you can leave the concept of team all together!

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Agile portfolio planning is a great (chief) product owner tool to plan and trace initiatives across various teams. Implementing it can be difficult and cumbersome at times. This post explores the number one critical success factor to do Agile portfolio planning right; Outcome oriented decision making.
Outcome goals are valuable for streamlining your Agile portfolio planning and engaging people involved. Having them clear, enables you to judge all initiatives and ideas based on their contribution to these goals. This creates focus and clarity. For product owners this means it will be easier to explain to others where and when people will work on certain ideas, as well as saying no to the irrelevant ones. Simple two by two frameworks can help you clarify the details and course of action, be it directly product related or impacting you from the side-lines.
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Dit is een vraag die regelmatig door mijn hoofd speelt. In ieder geval moeten we stoppen met het continu romantiseren van deze initiatieven en als corporate Nederland nou eens echt mee gaan spelen.

Maar hoe?

Grofweg zijn er twee strategieën als corporate: opkopen of zelf beter doen! Klinkt simpel, maar is toch best wel complex. Waarschijnlijk is de beste strategie om een mix te kiezen van beide, waarbij je maximaal je eigen corporate kracht gebruikt (ja, die heb je), en tegelijkertijd volledig de kracht van start-up innovatie kunt gebruiken.

Deze post verkent de mogelijkheden en je moet vooral verder lezen, als ook jij wilt weten hoe jij de digitalisering van de 21ste eeuw wilt overleven.

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My work allows me to meet a lot of different people, who actively pursue Scrum. Some of them question the value of doing a sprint review meeting at the end of every sprint. Stakeholders presumably do not “use” nor “see” their work directly, or the iterated product is not yet releasable.

Looks like this Scrum ritual is not suited for all. If you are a person questioning the value of a demo, then focus on your stakeholders and start to demo the delta instead of just your product. Here is a 3-step plan to make your sprint reviews worth your while.
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This post provides some alternate standup questions to let your standup be: aimed forward, goal focused, team focused.

The questions are:

1. What have I achieved since our last SUM?
2. What is my goal for today?
3. What things keep me from reaching my goal?
4. What is our team goal for the end of our sprint day?

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People dislike change. It disrupts our routines and we need to invest to adapt. We only go along if we understand why change is needed and how we benefit from it.
The key to intrinsic motivation is to experience the benefits of the change yourself, rather than having someone else explain it to you.

Agility is almost an acronym for change. It is critical to let people experience the benefits of Agility before asking them to buy into this new way of working. This post explains how to create a great Agile experience in a fun, simple, cost efficient and highly effective way. BEing agile, before BEcoming agile!

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This drawing explains how agility accelerates your business. It is free to use and distribute. Should you have any questions regarding the subjects mentioned, feel free to get in touch.

This weeks wisdom:

“If your code smells, your business will be slow”

I would like to introduce you to Master PO. Master PO comes from the land of the rising sun. There he runs a successful sushi-shop with many happy customers.

Many has he trained in the art of successful “PO-ness”. As of today Master PO will share his wisdom and shenanigans with you too.

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The secret to 3-digit productivity growth is simple; stay focussed on your goal. One thing that keeps us from staying focussed is context switching; picking up a task, then interrupting it for another task and the starting up the previous task. Context switching originates from different levels within the organization. If you can effectively manage and decrease context switching, you can achieve amazing results and save a lot of resources. In this post I will tell you how to best combat context switching and gain more focus.

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