Tag: LeSS

Agile Project Management, Certification, Personal Agility, PMI-ACP

Got Your CSM, Now What?

Perhaps, like 500,000+ other people, you have some form of Certified Scrum Master (CSM) credential and are looking to distinguish yourself and continue your learning journey. Of course, learning is not tied to credentials, many people are anti-certification and that is an understandable choice. I encourage lifelong learning separate from credentials. However, for credential seekers, this article explores some common credential pathways beyond the CSM. I want to disclose upfront that I have been involved with the development of ICAgile, PMI-ACP, and DSDM Leadership credentials so I likely have some bias and preferences. However, my goal here is not to recommend specific credentials but instead to explain options and environmental factors to consider, helping people make their own choice based […]

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Agile Project Management, Books, Planning, Risk Management

Agile and Strategic Alignment

This month’s theme at ProjectManagement.com is “Strategy Alignment/IT Strategy.” This can seem at odds for agile teams who organically grow solutions towards evolving requirements. Where’s the strategy in that, and how do we promote empowered teams while preventing chaos? Most organizations spend considerable time and effort developing strategic roadmaps and they don’t want this work undermined by unordered development. Fortunately, hope is at hand with some well proven models. While the common kernel of agile practices make little mention of strategy or architecture, many of the supporting guides and scaling approaches handle the topic well. So, when faced with a criticism of no place for IT strategy or struggling to link an existing strategy to an autonomous team we can […]

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Agile Project Management, Books, Leadership, Planning, Teams

Thinking Tools for Scaling Frameworks

Scaling agile is a hot topic these days. Frameworks like LESS (LargE Scale Scrum), SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) and DAD (Disciplined Agile Delivery) are in the limelight as too are companies training up ‘’Agile Transformation Consultants’’ to transition entire organizations to agile. However, successful scaling is not easy, it is one thing to put a company through a week’s worth of training and mentoring, but another completely to make lasting changes to working practices and resolve all the issues that get surfaced along the way.  The logic is simple, when executives see a successful agile project their initial thoughts are often: “Great, let’s do more of this!”, yet the solution is complex. Solving the simple question of “How do we […]

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