The Daily Standup

Why Pressure Backfires Faster Than Leaders Think - Mike CohnIf your team keeps overcommitting, the answer is probably not more pressure.
It may be less.
Most teams do not need help being optimistic. They already want to believe they can get more done. They want to be helpful. They want to be seen as capable. They want to say yes.
So when a leader adds pressure, even subtly, it rarely creates a better plan.
It creates a less honest one.
And pressure is not always loud. Sometimes it sounds like urgency. Sometimes it sounds like enthusiasm. Sometimes it sounds like, “This would really help us hit our goals this quarter.”
But teams hear the message underneath the message: We really want this to fit.
Once they hear that, many teams do what people do under pressure. They lean toward the optimistic case. They discount risk. They stop saying the uncomfortable part out loud.
That does not make the work smaller. It just makes the plan weaker.
Your job during planning is not to squeeze confidence out of the team. Your job is to create the conditions for truth. That means asking questions like:
 

• What assumptions are we making?
• What could derail this?
• What feels least certain right now?
• What would have to go unusually well for this to work?

Those questions do not slow planning down. They improve it.
Because pressure does not eliminate uncertainty. It drives uncertainty underground. And once that happens, overcommitment is usually just a matter of time.
If you want more realistic commitments, do not start by pushing harder.
Start by making it safer to tell the truth.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/

Earth Day 2026 - The Boy and the SnakesIn 1979, after a massive flood hit the region of Assam, a 16-year-old Jadav was walking along the banks of the Brahmaputra River. He came across a sight that broke his heart: hundreds of snakes had been washed up onto a barren, treeless sandbar. With no shade to protect them and no forest to hide in, the snakes had died from the blistering heat.Jadav sat down and wept over their bodies. He realized that without trees, all living things—including humans—would eventually suffer the same fate.When he asked the local elders for help, they told him nothing would grow on that sandy wasteland, but they gave him twenty bamboo saplings to try. Jadav went to that desolate island and planted them.Then, he stayed.For the next 40 years, Jadav Payeng planted a tree every single day. He lived a simple life as a milk seller, but his true soul was poured into that sandbar. He carried seeds, transported red ants to improve the soil quality, and buckled down against the harsh river winds. He didn't do it for fame, money, or even a "thank you." He did it because he had made a promise to the earth.Decades passed before the world even noticed he existed. In 2008, forest officials were stunned to discover a dense, thriving forest where maps showed only a barren wasteland.Today, the Molai Forest spans over 1,300 acres—an area larger than New York’s Central Park. What started as a few bamboo shoots is now a lush sanctuary filled with:

• Thousands of species of trees.
• A herd of over 100 elephants that visits regularly.
• Bengal tigers, rhinos, and deer.
• Vibrant birdlife that had long since vanished from the region.

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I Was Asked to Fire One-Third of the Company, Here’s What That Taught Me About Leadership and CoachingI still remember the silence in the room.My CEO had just finished speaking. The words were simple, almost clinical: “We need to reduce headcount by one-third.”No drama. No hesitation. Just a decision.And suddenly, I wasn’t just the Head of HR anymore.
I was the person who would carry out one of the most painful transformations a company can go through.That day, I realized something uncomfortable:Being in HR doesn’t protect you from hard decisions.
It puts you at the center of them.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 real reasons top performers quit, and what managers can do about itYou hired the best people on your team. They deliver results, take initiative, and raise the bar for everyone around them. And then, one day, they hand in their resignation.You run through the usual explanations — better pay, a bigger title, a competitor’s offer. But if you look more carefully, the answer is often closer to home.Most top performers don’t leave their jobs. They leave their managers.It’s hard to hear, but it’s the most important insight you can get. Because once you understand why your best people leave, you can fix what’s pushing them away and create a workplace they genuinely want to stay in.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/

Autistic Bowler Achieves Dream With His First Perfect 300 Game And Joins the PBA as a ProOn March 25, an autistic bowler who recently entered the Professional Bowlers Association achieved something he’s been dreaming about for years—his first-ever 300 game.For most casual bowlers, a sanctioned perfect game is rare. For Matt Sipes, it represented so much more than just 12 strikes. It was the result of years of dedication, focus, and determination, and although there have been challenges along the way, he never gave up on his goal.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 “Agile” Team That Was Actually Just Doing Waterfall in SprintsEvery two weeks, they ran a sprint review. The stakeholders attended. The demos were polished. The velocity charts trended in the right direction. And nothing significant ever changed based on what anyone said in that room.That’s not agile. That’s theater with a two-week rhythm.I’ve coached enough product teams to know that the mimicry of processes is one of the most expensive habits in software development. It looks like agility from the outside. It absorbs all the cost — the ceremonies, the tooling, the vocabulary; but delivers almost none of the benefit. Teams often know this, but feel powerless to speak up because the ceremonies themselves have become the “proof” of professionalism.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/

Why Estimating and Planning Still Matter - Mike CohnOver the years, I’ve talked with a lot of teams who’ve been burned by estimating and planning.
They’ve seen estimates treated as promises.
Plans turned into contracts.
Teams punished for being wrong rather than rewarded for learning.
Given experiences like those, it’s understandable that many teams conclude the solution is to eliminate estimating and planning altogether.
I think that’s a mistake.
Estimating and planning still matter—not because the future is predictable, but because it isn’t. 
Teams and organizations still have to make decisions about what to work on, what to delay, and what risks they’re willing to accept. 
Those decisions don’t disappear just because we stop estimating.
Any time we choose one piece of work over another, we’re estimating. 
The real choice isn’t whether to estimate, but whether those estimates are explicit or implicit. 
In my experience, explicit estimates create transparency. Implicit estimates just hide the guessing.
One of the biggest problems with estimating is the belief that estimates exist to be accurate. 
A better question is whether an estimate is good enough to support the decision being made. 
When teams make that shift, estimating becomes far less stressful—and far more useful.
The same is true of planning. Planning doesn’t reduce adaptability. Over-commitment does. Good planning aligns assumptions and intent so teams can adjust quickly when things change.
I often hear people say, “Estimates are always wrong.” 
Being wrong isn’t the real problem. Estimates are hypotheses, and reality supplies the data. 
The real failure is treating estimates as promises and punishing teams when reality turns out to be more complex than expected.
Before estimating or planning, I encourage teams to pause and ask three questions:
 

• What decision does this support?
• What happens if we’re wrong?
• Who will use this information—and how?

If those questions don’t have clear answers, the problem usually isn’t how the team is estimating.
It’s why.
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The Sprint That Never DeliveredThree sprints in a row. Less than half of what the team committed — delivered.As a Scrum Master, that’s the kind of pattern that keeps you up at night. Not because of the numbers themselves, but because of what comes next: the questions from management, the looks in the retrospective, the slow erosion of the team’s belief in themselves.This was Team A. And they were trying. That much was clear.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/

Sprint After Sprint After Sprint… When Did This Stop Feeling Like Progress?Here’s a question I want you to sit with for a moment. When you picture a high-performing Agile team — what do you see?Fast delivery?Clean boards?Strong velocity?Stakeholders who are happy and aligned?Now let me ask you a harder question. In that picture — how does the team feel?Because I’ve been in organizations that had all the first things. And absolutely none of the second.
And I will tell you from experience: that is not high performance.
That is a machine consuming the people inside it.
And machines don’t have retrospectives when they break down.
They just — stop.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/

7 Mindsets of High Performers That Will Change How You WorkAfter years of working closely with teams, leaders, and organizations, one pattern becomes impossible to ignore. High performers aren’t just more talented, luckier, or even working harder than everyone else.They think, approach growth, and respond to pressure differently. And over time, those differences compound into extraordinary results.Mindset is the invisible architecture behind every decision, habit, and result. It shapes how people approach challenges, learn from mistakes, and keep moving forward when things get difficult.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/