The Daily Standup

The Unglamorous Truth About Building Trust I spent my first few months as a Scrum Master chasing the wrong thing. I thought trust was something you earned with one big moment. Deliver a miracle sprint. Shield the team from an impossible deadline. Stand up to that one difficult stakeholder in a meeting. I was waiting for my chance to be heroic.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Not Every Backlog Item Needs Detail - Mike CohnHere’s something I’ve noticed over the years:
Many teams think backlog refinement means making the entire product backlog detailed and “ready.”
That’s not how a healthy backlog works.
A well-managed product backlog should have a gradient of clarity.
Items near the top of the backlog—the ones you’re likely to work on soon—should be clear and reasonably detailed. They should have acceptance criteria, clarified assumptions, and enough shared understanding that the team can confidently bring them into a sprint.
But items further down the backlog should be less detailed.
They might be nothing more than a sentence or two.
It’s not wrong to leave lower backlog items vague. It’s the right and agile thing to do.
For example, imagine you’re building a travel booking website. Early on, you might have detailed backlog items about booking airfare and booking hotels. Those are core features, so they deserve detail.
But you might also have an item about booking cabins on a cruise ship. If cruises aren’t central to your product, that item can stay vague for a long time. It doesn’t need to be “Sprint Planning ready” six months before anyone will work on it.
If you fully refine backlog items far in advance, you’re doing a lot of work on items that will change, move, or disappear.
So rather than trying to keep the whole backlog “ready,” focus your refinement effort where it matters most:
At the top.
Refinement should make sprint planning easier.
That happens when the next sprint or two is well understood—not when the product backlog is documented 50 items deep.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Has Scrum Peaked Too Soon?I rarely write about Scrum anymore. Not because I suddenly dislike it, but because my work has gradually moved in a different direction.Still, I sometimes wonder whether Scrum peaked too soon. During the 20 years I worked as a Certified Scrum Trainer at Scrum Alliance, I delivered dozens of training sessions. One thing always stood out to me…The case studies used to explain the urgency of Scrum were often quite old. Think of the Kodak story. A company that missed the shift to digital photography.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

One of the Impacts of Easter in Our LivesEaster is a particular time we set as a celebration of our God of the gospel—Christ dying on the cross for the payment of our sins, God accepting Jesus’ payment by raising Him from the dead, and the Holy Spirit’s transformative work in our lives for righteousness. One of the beautiful impacts of Easter on my life took form as I reflected on a particular incident.   How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

The Meaning and Significance of Good FridayWhy Good Friday is the Holiest Day of the YearGood Friday stands at the heart of the Christian faith. It is the day when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, suffered and died on the cross for the salvation of humanity. While the name “Good Friday” may seem paradoxical—given that it commemorates Christ’s suffering and death—it is “good” because His sacrifice opened the gates of heaven and restored our relationship with God.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Which Leadership Pattern Shows Up Under Pressure? - Mike CohnEvery year around April 1st, we like to have a little fun.But as with most good humor, there’s usually a grain of truth underneath it.After working with thousands of teams and leaders over the years, one thing has become very clear: agile rarely succeeds or fails because of a framework. It succeeds or fails because of leadership behavior under pressure.When deadlines tighten…. When scope grows…. When velocity dips…. When stakeholders ask uncomfortable questions…Patterns emerge.Some leaders protect the outcome.
Some protect the date.
Some protect the process.
Some protect momentum.None of these are “good” or “bad.” They’re instincts. And under enough pressure, we all fall back on instinct.So this year’s April Fools exercise is a simple (and only slightly unscientific) question:Which leadership archetype shows up most often?Answer it about yourself. Or answer it about someone you work with.Just choose the responses that feel uncomfortably familiar.The results are 100% accurate. Approximately.It’s easy to laugh at archetypes.It’s harder to recognize that under pressure, most of us drift toward one.Agile frameworks don’t fail because teams forget a ceremony. They struggle when leadership instincts unintentionally override the conditions that make empiricism work: transparency, adaptation, and trust.The good news? Leadership patterns aren’t fixed traits. They’re habits. And habits can change.If this exercise felt a little too accurate, that’s not a problem. It’s an opportunity.Because small shifts in how leaders respond — to scope, to deadlines, to uncertainty — can have an outsized impact on how teams perform.That’s the part that isn’t a joke.If you’re curious what those shifts look like in practice, we’ve spent the last two decades helping leaders explore exactly that.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

The AI TPM LandscapeIf you search for "AI Technical Program Manager career advice," you'll find two things: job postings and generic reassurance that "your skills transfer." What you won't find is anyone mapping the actual landscape showing which companies expect what, and where your existing experience actually gets you.I've spent the last three years at a cybersecurity company during its AI transformation, watching how AI products actually ship. I've analyzed job descriptions across dozens of companies spanning three tiers (Frontier AI, AI-Applied-to-Business, and AI-Powered Applications).AI TPM roles vary more than the job titles suggest. Some require deep fluency in model development. Others require working knowledge of how to ship AI-powered products without building the models yourself.This distinction matters because it defines the depth of your technical pivot. It determines whether you need to master the 'physics' of model development, the 'orchestration' of AI-powered systems, or the strategic integration of AI into existing workflows. 

Scrum Is Dead - Here Is What Killed It!
My dear friend Katharine reached out to me and asked me to review and reply to this LinkedIn post. NOW I perfectly understand why! Great job bringing this to my attention. How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

That's What Friends Are ForWhat does true friendship look like? Join us for this Friday episode to learn what exactly stands behind true friendship. How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Predictability Is My North StarVelocity said “healthy.”
The system said “unhealthy.”
I chose to trust the system.For six straight Sprints, the velocity chart looked great. Every Sprint, the team hit the number. Every review, the dashboard showed green.And yet… the last couple of Sprints felt bad.Work thrashed. Priorities shifted. Unplanned items kept sneaking in. The team was exhausted, and I needed a way to explain why the system felt chaotic when the metric insisted everything was fine.That was the moment I realized velocity wasn’t telling me the truth. I needed a better way to understand what was happening. I needed a way to see what went wrong and account for the change.That’s when Predictability Became My North Star.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/