Resources

The Winning Edge: How Emotional Intelligence Elevates Performance

Helping young athletes navigate their emotions on the ice can be the difference between winning and losing. This article explores how hockey coaches can use emotional intelligence to support their players in high-pressure situations, helping them channel frustration, manage stress, and stay focused. These insights can also offer valuable lessons for leadership in other fields, like Agile coaching.

The Journey and Future of Scrum and Agile – A Reflection

Reflecting on Two Decades of Agile Over 20 years ago, while working as a Software Engineer on an Air Defense System, I found myself in a traditional waterfall context. Yet, within this rigid framework, my team and I began exhibiting Agile behaviors—cross-functionality, curiosity, and a relentless drive to adapt our ways of working. We instinctively […]

10 Common Management Challenges Solved by Scrum

As a manager, tackling team and project challenges effectively can often seem like navigating a complex labyrinth. Fortunately, Scrum offers a structured framework that can guide you through.  Here’s how Scrum addresses ten common challenges that managers face, providing clear solutions through its empirical approach. 1. Unclear Priorities Challenge: Teams often struggle with prioritizing tasks […]

The remnants of 2017: A Journey to Empirical Scrum

This post was inspired by a recent conversation with a colleague about the evolving role of the Scrum Master and the words found in the 2017 Scrum Guide that led my colleague to vanish from the Scrum world, thinking it was a scam.  In the ever-evolving landscape of Agile methodologies, the Scrum Guide has served […]

Transforming Leadership with Minecraft Education

The story aims to showcase the transformative power of Agile and Scrum in leadership and team management within the tech industry. It’s inspired by real-world scenarios where leaders face challenges in project management and team dynamics. The intent is to provide a relatable and inspiring narrative that underscores the value of specialized Scrum training.

Key Highlights:
James’s journey from facing leadership challenges to embracing Agile training.
The impact of the APS course with Minecraft in providing practical, hands-on experience in Scrum.
James’s growth, leading to improved team dynamics and project success at Innovatech (fictive company name)

Is the Integral Coaching ® a game-changer for Agile Coaches? 🤔

As an Agile Coach, I begin engagements by assessing the organization’s needs to fully embrace the Agile Mindset. I gauge their understanding and application of Agile and Scrum—scrutinizing the use of the framework, the agile maturity of teams and leadership, and the intent behind each conversation. My services encompass teaching Scrum, advising, mentoring, and agile […]

Is Scrum Whole By Itself?

Is Scrum all that you need? Many organization are looking at sub-optimal implementations of Scrum and think the framework is incomplete. I think the most popular example is what the Liberators are calling Zombie Scrum. They created a metaphor to shine the light on some common pitfalls when some components of Scrum are not well […]

Building Scrum Master’s Awareness- Workshop

Goal The goal is to help Scrum Masters build self-awareness related to their accountability in the Scrum framework using the quadrants of the Integral Theory. This is not an activity that aims to a black and white answer, nor that holds the truth around the possible stances of a Scrum Master. This is an activity […]

Intro to the Integral Theory

Back in the ’70s, a few personal development models were being studied. One of them grew to become what we now know as the Integral Theory from Ken Wilber. His theory evolved over the years to include the many perspectives and studies that were being revealed over time. Wilber’s motto has been and still is, […]

For the Love of Scrum

This article shines the light on the reasons why Scrum has been important for me and how it is still a centerpiece. The story starts two years before Scrum had been introduced in my life, right after completing my electrical engineering degree. TL;DR In a nutshell, Scrum changed my life at work. 🥳🤓 It just […]

Frequently Asked Questions

This article addresses the frequently asked questions when discovering Agile and Scrum. You will read about what Agile is and how Scrum will help you achieve all the benefits of having good agility. What is an Agile Framework? It is a modern way of prioritizing customer satisfaction, technical excellence, and effective collaboration when developing and […]

Learning Scrum using Minecraft Education

Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all staying home for the safety of our people. This is a hard time for all of us. While classes are re-scheduled in the Fall, some of us Scrum trainers are refocusing our energy to help the household while others are investigating how to conduct interactive online training. The […]

Agile Contracts

In this article, you will read what to look for when writing an Agile contract. I hope you’ll increase your chances of success, by focusing on collaboration and short delivery frequencies. I need software and I am about to hire a firm to build it for me. How do I write a contract that protects […]

What Does a Scrum Master Do?

This post has been written as documentation for the Agile Ottawa Meetup 101 session held on October 8, 2013. The Scrum Framework In order to dig further into our Scrum Master role, let’s get a short reminder of Scrum. Scrum is an iterative framework that has a fixed period called Sprint which is shorter than […]

The Agile Values

This post has been written as a documentation for the Agile Ottawa Meetup 101 session held on Sept 10, 2013. As this is the first Agile 101 session of the season, I thought it useful to introduce the manifesto and its underlying values. As an Agile Coach, whenever I walk in a company I read […]