The health of teams has a direct impact on organizational results as well as on individuals’ happiness in their work. In this episode, Richard and Peter outline the 6 conditions that researchers J Richard Hackman and Ruth Wegeman have discovered are critical for a team to be healthy and effective. They also cover what you can do to contribute to those conditions, whether you’re a leader or a junior team member. Read More
People often assume prioritization—whether for a Scrum product backlog or a personal todo list—is an analytical problem best solved with value calculations and spreadsheets. But it turns out that great product people tend to use intuition, gut feel, rather than analysis to prioritize. In this episode, Peter and Richard introduce a set of heuristics gathered from the best product people that you can use to prioritize work quickly and intuitively. Read More
The Sprint Retrospective is perhaps the most important event in Scrum. In this episode, Richard and Peter share their two favorite ways to make the Sprint Retrospective meeting way more effective. If your team’s retros have become boring, repetitive, or just a waste of time, these two key moves will bring them back to life. Read More
In this episode, Richard and Peter dig into how to have an effective Sprint Review meeting. Great Sprint Reviews, achieve 3 goals and answer 3 key questions. Learn how do accomplish this on your team. (And discover why “Sprint Demo” is too limited a name for this meeting.) While this is explicitly Scrum-focused, it’s really about how to have a meeting to review a body of work as a team, whether you’re using Scrum or not. Read More
In this episode, Richard and Peter give 3 quick tips you can use to have a more effective Daily Scrum right away. Too many teams waste this important meeting on a boring status report instead of using it to create team alignment and make every day matter. Read More
In this episode, Richard and Peter dig into the 3 conditions for an effective Sprint Planning meeting. While this is explicitly Scrum-focused, it’s really about how to have a good team planning meeting, whether you’re using Scrum or not. Read More
Peter and Richard are often asked: “Why do you guys like Scrum so much? It seems like a lot of meetings, and I see a lot of teams struggling with it. But you recommend it for a lot of situations, and it seems like you’ve thought a lot about it.” In this episode, they explain why Scrum works when it works and why it’s still their favorite approach for product development, including outside of software development. Read More
In organizations where teams and individuals are empowered to own and direct their own work, what do managers do? Is there even a role for a manager in an empowered org? In this episode, Richard and Peter introduce the Humanizing Work Three Jobs of Management model, showing how skillful managers can add significant value in their role. Read More
In this episode, Richard and Peter take on the challenge of so-called “technical stories,” backlog items that emerge from a development team and that don’t represent a clear slice of customer value. How should a product owner handle these? Are “technical stories” even a thing? Read More
Making clear commitments and having regular discussions about accountability is a hallmark of every successful organization and, outside of work, every successful relationship. In this episode, Peter covers how to make a commitment with integrity, how to honorably break or renegotiate a commitment when necessary, and how to have effective conversations about accountability. Read More
