The Daily Standup

Sage Advice For My Son Justin on His Wedding Day This is a rather personal episode... But I did it in hopes that at least one of you can also benefit from this advice. 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/

Being Too Precise Hurts Your Plans - Mike Cohn I need a new backup drive. I don’t need a 40 TB drive but the site I buy from listed one available. I thought I might as well click on it to see the price.
The price seemed reasonable for that much storage, but what caught my attention is that the drive ships in 205 days.
Seriously, what are they thinking? How can they possibly know the drive will ship in 205 days, not 204 or 206?
This website fell into what I call the precision trap, which is applying a false level of precision to some estimate or plan. We often fall into the precision trap because of the math involved in planning.
Let me clarify this with an example. Suppose a team has estimated that it needs to deliver 100 story points of work to achieve some objective. They’ve already calculated their velocity to be 15. Someone on the team does the simple math of 100 divided by 15 and gets 6.66. Team members then proclaim that they will be done in 6.66 sprints. Or hopefully someone decides to round that up and say it will take 7 sprints.
But math like this leads to the precision trap. You can see from this how the website decided the drive would ship in 205 days.The precision trap persists because we seem wired to like precision. It feels good to say we’ll be done in 6.66 sprints. We must be really smart to know that.
But we need to favor being accurate over being precise. Accuracy is about being right. The easiest way to be right is to be less precise.
For example, that website could have told me the drive would ship in “about 7 or 8 months.” That would have been enough precision for me to decide whether to buy it.
When math tells a team they can deliver in 6.66 sprints, that is very precise. But it’s probably not very accurate. Just like the ship date of the hard drive, that estimate should be conveyed as a range. Instead of 6.66 sprints, maybe it’s 6 to 9 sprints or even 7 to 10 sprints.
Avoid falling into the precision trap if you want to succeed with agile 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/

Are You a CT-NO? A CEO once told me it felt like the CTO misheard and thought his title was CT- N O. “Can we do that? No. Is that feasible? No.” After wiping myself from having spilled my coffee laughing, I realized that’s such a common stance tech executives take that I’m surprised I hadn’t heard the term earlier. Let’s discuss why so many people have this issue and how you can become a force-multiplying CTO instead of a backlog gatekeeper. 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/

What happens POST Agile Coaching? In future, the agile coach becomes a delivery leader, moving from cheering at the sidelines to playing an active role in execution, with delivery accountability. The idea that a Scrum team can be self-organizing and act in a silo is long-dead. The World is too complex for that. No single team knows everything about the business, the customer, the regulatory environment and the technology environment in which they work. It’s why we have all the departments we do in organizations. The best teams know how to navigate necessary complexity and produce results together. This ability to navigate is where the future of the agile coach lies. 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/

How to Better Leverage Assumptions and Thwart Risk In product management, most of our ideas are not going to work. It’s essential to test our assumptions before the implementation. But you can’t test everything. And you can’t test what you’re unaware of. 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/

Nine Simple Hacks That Make Life So Much Easier! 1. Be a ‘top-level asker.’ 2. Presuppose greatness. 3. Simplify daily. 4. Prioritize uncomfortable conversations. 5. Be aggressively countercultural. 6. Choose bigger problems.
7. Create mystery. 8. Commit to becoming elite in one thing. 9. Biased to what’s working.
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 Art of Asking the Right Questions - Becoming the ScrumMaster Asking the right questions is a crucial skill for any Scrum Master. Mastering this ability can yield numerous benefits in various situations, especially when engaging in conversations or working within an agile context. Here's why it matters: Ask Questions to Know More About Your Team
Ask Follow-up Questions After You Listen Ask Questions to Clarify Your Role Ask Questions About the Company & Product
Ask Questions About Expectations

Short Answers To BIG Questions About Agile Leaders What Is an Agile Leader? Three qualities define an agile leader. First, agile leaders are comfortable with uncertainty. They’re willing to hear and say, “I don’t know.” They understand not everything can be stated with certainty. This means they can accept it when a team says they’ll be done in five or six months. Second, agile leaders guide; they don’t command. An agile leader does not tell people the specific steps to take to achieve a goal. Instead, the agile leader creates a culture of teamwork, transparency, and continuous improvement. This environment empowers team members to achieve great things. Third, agile leaders do less but accomplish more. Agile leaders are rarely a flurry of activity. Instead, they motivate and inspire others to do more of the right things. Jazz great Thelonious Monk was known for leaving silence between the notes he played. He said, “What you don't play can be more important than what you do.” Like Monk, an agile leader knows that what they don’t do–where they leave space–can be more important than what they do. 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/

Crafting the PERFECT Offer... You’ve made the cold calls. Sent the emails. Built the landing page. Ran the ads. You’ve generated significant interest. Yet, people are still not buying. Why? Probably because your offer sucks. And it’s not your fault. Understand this: A great offer makes business easy. Once you’re able to craft and articulate an offer that people can’t refuse, you get to play business on easy mode. 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/

Maximizing Stakeholder Buy-in The most amazing product strategy and product roadmap are ineffective if the stakeholders don’t support them. Without their buy-in, you’ll struggle to execute the strategy and find it hard to deliver the roadmap. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This article shares my tips to help you secure strong stakeholder buy-in to strategic product decisions, align people, and achieve product success together. 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/