Month: July 2020

Agile Project Management, Books, Leadership, Teams

5 Tools for Team Conflict Resolution

Is infighting damaging your team morale and retention? Do you know what types of conflict are healthy and which are not? When you do intervene, do you have a strategy, or just ”wing it” and hope for the best? People have different ideas; this diversity helps us overcome any individual shortcomings. It also means conflict is inevitable on projects. Whenever we have people contribute different opinions about a solution, there will be some level of conflict. Minor disagreement in the pursuit of a better solution is positive and welcome. Persistent bickering and personal attacks are destructive and need to be addressed. So how do we do that?

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Agile Project Management, Leadership, Planning, Remote Work, Tailoring Approaches, Teams, Theory of Constraints

Can We Still be Agile?

How does work from home impact our use of agile approaches? If co-location is no longer possible, can we still be agile? Yes, of course we can, and in many ways, now we need to be more agile than ever as we try new approaches, learn and adapt how we work. However, let’s address the co-location question and look at agile practices in remote work situations. The Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles do not mention co-location. They do not say teams have to work together to be agile or effective. Instead, they say, “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation” and “Business people and developers must work together daily […]

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Toptal Blog Proposal: Creating a Risk-Adjusted Backlog

This article explains what a risk-adjusted backlog is, why they are useful, how to create one and how teams work with them. What is a Risk-Adjusted Backlog? A risk-adjusted backlog is a backlog that contains activities relating to managing risk in addition to the usual features associated with delivering value. Agile projects typically prioritize the backlog based on business value or perceived needs. The Product Owner or business representative prioritizes the backlog elevating the highest value features to the top, so they get delivered first. Taking an Economic View of Decision Making Prioritizing based on business value is an example of the lean concept of ‘Taking an Economic View of Decision Making.’ In deciding which feature to develop first, those […]

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About

Mike Griffiths CONTACT Email Address: Mike@LeadingAnswers.com LinkedIn: Mike Griffiths BIOGRAPHY I am Mike Griffiths, an independent author, project manager, trainer and consultant based in Canmore, Alberta. I moved to Canada in 2000 from England with my wife, Samantha, to be close to the Rocky Mountains where we enjoy hiking, mountain biking and snowboarding. In 1994, I was very fortunate to be involved in the creation of the agile method DSDM and have been using agile methods including FDD, Scrum and XP for the last 25 years. I served on the board of directors for the Agile Alliance and the board of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). I founded the Calgary Chapter of the APLN in 2006. In addition to […]

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Agile Project Management, Events, Leadership, Personal Agility, Remote Work, Tailoring Approaches, Teams, Warning Signs

Returning to the (Electronic) Cottage

This is not a post about rich people now able to visit their second homes after the lockdown, instead, a revisit of the concepts of decentralized work being the new way of undertaking projects. In 1980, Alvin Toffler’s book The Third Wave introduced the idea of “The Electronic Cottage” as the modern workplace where information technology allows more people to work from home or wherever they want. Toffler was a futurist and businessman who did not get the attention he deserved. Even though Accenture identified him as one of the most influential voices in business leaders (along with Bill Gates and Peter Drucker), we do not hear much about him.

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