Do we need a sprint goal?
In this episode, Richard and Peter talk about sprint goals. When are they useful? What might you do instead? Read More
Humanizing Work Show
Visionary vs Facilitating Product Ownership
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer a question that’s essentially: “Most of the standard Product Ownership advice doesn’t seem to apply to my situation. Am I just doing Product Ownership wrong?” They discuss two modes of Product Ownership—visionary and facilitating—and when each one is the right approach. Read More
Designing Good Experiments
Complex problems, whether in product development or organizational change require an experimental approach. In this episode, Richard and Peter answer a question about how to design good experiments (or probes, to use the Cynefin term). Read More
Senior Leadership Challenges in Agile Orgs
In this episode, Peter and Richard sit down with Melissa Boggs to talk about the unique challenges senior leaders face in Agile orgs and how that led us to create our 2019 senior leader retreat. Melissa talks about her experience as a participant at the 2019 event, and the trio shares their vision for the 2023 retreat, now that Melissa has joined Richard and Peter as a co-facilitator. Read More
The one where Peter apologizes to the CEO
In this episode, Peter tell the story of a time where his own reactive tendencies limited his effectiveness—in a big way—in an interaction with his CEO. Richard interviews Peter about what he learned from the experience, how he’d handle it now, and what advice he has for other leaders in challenging situations. Read More
Own-Influence-Respond
In this episode, Richard and Peter share their favorite tool for figuring out what to do in a frustrating situation where you don’t have the power to just fix it, including a few real examples. Read More
They’re All Customers
In this episode, Richard and Peter look at how customer research tools are useful in all kinds of contexts beyond product development. Got a relationship with a stakeholder at work that you’d like to improve? Learn how you can use customer research tools to better understand that stakeholder’s needs and how you and your team can help solve them. Read More
The 15 minutes that reveal the health of your team
How do you assess the health of a team? You could conduct surveys and interviews of team members and stakeholders. You could look at the results the team produces. You could watch them work for a week or two. Or, as Peter & Richard explain in this Humanizing Work Show episode, you could just observe a team’s Daily Scrum (aka Daily Standup) and learn 80% of what you need to know about health of a team. Read More
How does my work as a developer change in Scrum?
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “Our team is adopting Scrum, how does my role (as a developer) change?” Obviously, you’ll be doing Scrum now and you weren’t before, but beyond the obvious, there are three big ways you can expect your work to change. Read More
How much of Scrum should be standardized across teams?
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “How much should we standardize across our organization? Is it important that our sprint lengths match, that we estimate the same way, that we use the same tools, that we report the same metrics, etc.?” Obviously, standardizing everything isn’t going to work, but neither will standardizing nothing. So, where do you draw the line? Read More
