One of the common questions that we get at agilityIRL is, “How do we find good Scrum Masters?” One of the crucial steps in hiring for any role is the interview. In this blog, I want to provide you with some of my favorite Scrum Master interview questions and techniques. This entry is not intended...Read More

Trust Among Co-Workers, Especially Among Management and Staff Third is trust. Communication is easy; trust is hard. I’ll bet next week’s grocery money that someone who you know and trust may have fumbled their communication about something to you, yet, because there was high trust between you, you still got their meaning.     The...Read More

Appreciation When Work Is Done Well People want to feel appreciated when they do their work well. This is about so much more than money. In fact, unless you are working with mercenaries whose primary motivation is money (e.g., many sales people, just-passing-through CEO’s, etc.), money is not a motivator by its presence, but it...Read More

The Covid-19 pandemic has cast into stark relief the fact that, in this increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world, THE key to competitive advantage is the organization’s culture. So, what makes someplace a great place to work? Based on my experience, there are five things. And I don’t care what kind of organization...Read More

In the last month, I’ve occasionally been asked why I chose to pursue my Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) accreditation rather than become a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). Even more frequently I’ve been asked what the difference is. As a PST I can teach Professional Scrum Master (PSM) classes accredited by Scrum.org rather than Certified Scrum...Read More

As many of our regular readers know, we are huge fans of Seth Godin.  For those of you who may be unfamiliar with his work, Seth is a leader, marketer, and author.  You can read more about him here: https://www.sethgodin.com . While never formally identifying himself as an Agilist, Seth very much embodies an Agile mindset....Read More

One way to judge someone’s leadership maturity is based on the maturity they show in taking responsibility and the maturity they show in engaging others, be they subordinates, superiors, peers, customers, vendors or others.  Adapting a Control/Responsibility Matrix presented by Seth Godin[1], we’ll present our “Leadership Maturity Matrix,” identifying four different leadership personas, representing different...Read More

As many want to do in the upper Midwest, I spend part of my summer fishing.  While I live in the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”, one of my favorite fishing trips is to Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota.  The Lake is actually a reservoir created by the damming of the Missouri river.  It is a...Read More

Based on over 4-decades of observational research, I can confidently assert that intellectual laziness is an all-too-common leadership fail. It is a myth that managers manage by the numbers.  So many leaders that I’ve observed in action simply were not skilled thinkers, having little understanding of data, statistical methods, empirical analysis, and probabilistic decision-making.  In...Read More

There are a number of great anecdotes and quotes associated with American Football.  From Vince Lombardi, “What the hell is going on out there?” to Dick Butkus, “I only cheat in league games,” to Randy Moss’ “Straight cash, homie!” the characters of the game have provided us with a number of memorable one-liners and stories....Read More