Trick-or-treaters Leave Their Halloween Candy For Child Battling Leukemia
A search for hope at the end of this very anxious week led me to this humble bundle. Zoe, 3, is the proud product of TJ and Courtney Thomas of Atlanta, Georgia.
Back in February, Zoe was diagnosed with leukemia. And because her immune system is now compromised, she couldn't go trick-or-treating on Halloween with all the other kids. In fact, her parents even had to put up a sign to keep other kids away. The sign read: "Sorry, no candy. Child with cancer. See you next year!"
"The whole purpose was just so that we wouldn't have to keep telling kids 'sorry' and have disappointed kids," Zoe's mother Courtney Thomas said. "Never expected anything like this."
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The Phantom Sprint — Invisible Work That Steals Velocity
Your sprint looks healthy — until a phantom dependency eats your finish line. Here’s how to find the invisible work before the demo.
Detection & prevention tactics
Dependency board: visible KANBAN lane for external asks with owners and ETA.
Capacity buffer: protect 10–20% of sprint for unplanned but likely work.
Pre-planning checkpoint: 5-min readout with ops/support to surface recurring interrupts.
Risk register: short public list of items that can block sprint goals.
The Haunted Backlog — When Old Stories Won’t Die
Triage: Mark backlog items > 90 days old as “graveyard candidates.”
Reframe: Turn vague epics into a one-sentence outcome + metric. If you can’t, bury it.
Timebox an experiment: If still valuable, create a 1-week spike with a clear success metric.
Assign ownership: No owner = forever ghost. Give it to someone accountable for outcome vs. activity.
Retire ritual: Monthly “retire or revive” cadence — items not revived are archived with a short rationale.
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A Chad Gymnast Scores Top Marks For Determination
The wall behind her is pockmarked and worn. She’s barefoot against a hard, cracked floor. And yet Achta Derib’s pose in this photograph by Antonio López Díaz, a finalist in the professional sports category at the Sony world photography awards, suggests reserves of determination that will carry her across continents to perform at the highest levels of her sport.
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Stop Worshipping Product Roadmaps
A few years ago, I sat through a two-hour planning session where we debated every line of a shiny new roadmap. By the end, we had a color-coded masterpiece: features neatly slotted by quarter, dependencies tracked, and timelines locked...
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The Only Three Things You Must Do To Improve Agility - Mike Cohn
Distilled to its essence, it’s quite simple to be a Scrum Master, agile coach, or anyone seeking to improve team or organizational agility. There are only three things you need to do and Saint Francis laid them out succinctly over 800 years ago:
To improve agility, we have to start with what’s necessary. Change practices that go against agile principles. If programmers and testers aren’t part of a single multidisciplinary team, that needs to change.
If the team doesn’t see the benefits of iterative and incremental work, you need to talk to them about that.
Similarly, if management is imposing deadlines without regard to the team’s opinion, you’ll need to help them see the light.
Having made changes necessary to enable agility, look next at what’s possible. There will be many more options to choose from now, such as:
“Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
Doing What’s NecessaryThen Do What’s Possible
Don’t try to improve too many things at once and choose wisely. Initially there will be opportunities for small changes to create outsize improvements.
Finally, Do the Impossible
At this point, it’s time to do the impossible . . . except that now very little is impossible.
Having iteratively and incrementally improved, most teams feel powerful enough to take on challenges and changes that would have seemed impossible before.
What still seem impossible are changes outside the team. Managers may still impose deadlines. Stakeholders may foist too-frequent changes because they’ve heard agile teams “embrace change.”
Fixing these outside-the-team behaviors isn’t impossible, but it is harder and often takes time. Fortunately a team that has done the necessary and then the possible will be ready to do the impossible.
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Agile Estimation: Relative vs. Absolute
Estimation in Agile isn’t about predicting the future — it’s about creating a shared understanding of work. Whether you’re planning a sprint or sizing up your backlog, you’re not aiming for perfect accuracy. You’re trying to get close enough to make smart decisions as a team.
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Scrum Theatre and the Agile Illusion
Imagine your team having a perfect stand-up. Everyone’s smiling, and it seems like everything is going smoothly. Everyone says that they do not have any blockers for today and that all’s well. Each person on the team is relaxed, and your Scrum Master is grinning from ear to ear.
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The Janitor at NASA
In the early 1960s, during the height of the space race, President John F. Kennedy toured NASA headquarters. The country was locked in fierce competition with the Soviet Union to put the first man on the moon, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher.
As JFK walked through the facility, he paused when he noticed a janitor sweeping the hallway late in the evening. Curious, the President stepped over and asked, “Why are you working so late? What are you doing here?”
Without hesitation, the janitor looked up and said, “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
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Team Dynamics - The Soloist - Mike Cohn
It’s always great when a high performer joins a team. A true star can elevate everyone through their attitude, ability, and commitment.
Think of them like a brilliant musician in a band—a lead guitarist or vocalist who’s not just talented, but who listens, collaborates, and knows how to bring out the best in everyone else. They don’t just shine—they make the whole group sound better.
But sometimes, the high-performing teammate turns out to be more comfortable as a soloist.
Soloists want to stand out—but often at the expense of the ensemble. They can sometimes play over others, ignore the rhythm of the group, and expect the spotlight on every track. They might be technically excellent, but they’re out of sync.
These kinds of high performers sometimes overvalue their individual contribution and subtly (or not-so-subtly) expect special treatment: the final say in decisions, the best projects, or freedom from feedback and constraints. When they take risks and things go wrong, they assume their talent will shield them—leaving the rest of the team to clean up after the show.
The difference between a true bandmate and a soloist isn’t skill—it’s orientation. One makes the team tighter. The other plays their own set.
That’s where the Scrum Master comes in.
A good Scrum Master notices when someone’s out of sync and steps in early—before the rhythm breaks.
Rather than act on their own opinion, the Scrum Master should have the private conversations necessary to confirm that the rest of the team also feels the soloist is throwing off their rhythm.
If the feeling is widespread, then the Scrum Master should have a private conversation with the soloist about any behavior that is detrimental to the team. If, for example, a diva is ignoring what the team selected during sprint planning and instead chooses to work on pet projects, the diva needs to understand that’s not acceptable.
If a private conversation doesn’t help, the Scrum Master can escalate the problem to the solist’s functional manager. Consider including the soloist in that conversation so that there’s no miscommunication and everyone is on the same page.
Don’t let one person throw off the rhythm of the whole team. To succeed with agile, we don’t need virtuosos; we need great bands.
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When Agile Meets Resistance
You’ve probably heard Agile being described as a novel way of navigating productivity at work, that it could boost collaboration, and uplift your teams into a well-oiled machine. That’s what they say, but how true is this? Especially in the IT culture?
In reality, when Agile is incorporated into traditional IT culture, it seems like a wreck than a harmonious integration. The resistance is strong with this one with developers, project managers, and IT leaders staring at each other with palpable tension.
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Scrum Has Become a Nice Term to Hide Bad Management
Once a wise man said: Fire all Scrum Masters and your non-technical managers who run your IT departments, and watch your productivity to boost up! In most cases, all you need is to hire highly-experienced Tech Leads and show trust in them. Communicate with them and share your insights, answer their questions, and provide them with what they need, including but not limited to the budget, time, ad-hoc specialist consultants, and coaches who would work for them to improve their non-technical skills. The rest, they will figure out themselves.
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One Last Lap - How a Coach Changed Lives
Listen in and learn how one attentive coach ran one last lap to help change the lives of countless students.
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ScrumBan... Is it real? Or just Camouflage?
Let’s get this straight.
Every time someone tells me they’re doing Scrumban, I raise an eyebrow. Not because I doubt hybrids. Hybrids can be powerful. But because in my experience, Scrumban is rarely a sign of maturity — it’s usually a cry for help.
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How to Engage Busy Stakeholders - Mike Cohn
We often find ourselves reliant on others outside the team.
For example, an agile team may get stuck waiting for feedback on the latest features or input on what to build next because a key stakeholder has never shown up for a sprint review. Without that stakeholder’s feedback, the team is impeded: unable to determine if what they’ve created is what’s needed.
The team nags, pleads, and cajoles. But still they’re left waiting because stakeholders are often busy, and they just can’t (or won’t) find the time.
You’ve tried moving the sprint review meeting to more convenient times. You’ve sent agendas that make it clear the stakeholder’s most desired feature is the one being discussed in the review.
But time and time again, something comes up at the last minute and the stakeholder is a no show.
In these instances, it’s time to take the meeting to them.
When a stakeholder won’t (or can’t) show up for the team, it’s time for a different approach:
Schedule a Non-Meeting Meeting Tip within the Tip: Want more help with team dynamics and stakeholder management? Try my free Scrum Team Reset training. It’s three videos from me that will help you find new ways to take your team from good to great.
When I schedule the meeting, I’ll sometimes be very clear what the meeting is about: “I want to go over such-and-such with you before the review.” Other times, I’ll be more vague: “I need to chat about the project.”
Use whatever language you need to secure time on the person’s calendar. Why? Because we are all more willing to cancel appointments with ourselves than we are to cancel an appointment with someone else. By putting time on their calendar that they’re reluctant to cancel, you’ve secured enough time for them to actually do the work.
Get the To-Do to Done
During the meeting, explain to them the work you need them to do (look at the feature and give feedback or clarify how the feature should work.) Then, use the time to step through the implementation (or plan) with them.
This results in two things: the team gets the information it needs. The stakeholder finds that the thing they’ve been putting off really wasn’t so bad once they focused on getting it done.
Why This Works
When stakeholders show an inability to get work or answers to you at appropriate times, it’s time to intervene. Maybe they’re worried their time will be wasted in a review where their feature is one of many being discussed.
Maybe “review the xyz feature” has been on their to-do list and keeps getting bumped down. Or maybe they haven’t actually scheduled a specific time to work on it.
No matter the reason, the work the team needs done is not happening. And your best chance of helping the stakeholder do that work is to schedule time with the stakeholder directly. And then use that time to make it happen.
Should stakeholders be able to do this on their own?
Sure.
But we all struggle at times. My experience is that after doing this a handful of times with a stakeholder, most stakeholders will form a new habit and be able to continue without you.
In other cases, you and the stakeholder will discover it actually is more efficient when done together, and you’ll keep a recurring meeting on their calendar that isn’t the review. That’s perfectly fine, too.
Stakeholders are often busy. And that can cause them to take longer to respond than a fast-moving agile team might like. Finding creative solutions that keep the team moving (even if it’s not something Scrum prescribes) is the best way to help advance a team from good to great,
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Clarity Is the Secret Weapon of Agile!
We often mistake transparency for clarity. Transparency just means the information is available. Clarity means you can actually see. Clarity is not dumping everything on the table. It’s making sense of it. It’s vision. It’s seeing...
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Burnout Is NOT a Agile Problem - It Is A Planning Problem
I remember a sprint planning meeting a few months ago, and I knew the sprint was doomed before it even started. Not because of bugs or blockers — those we could handle. It was the way everyone looked during planning: like we were gearing up for a marathon we hadn’t trained for.
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5 “Healthy” Habits That Are Quietly Aging You
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Is Scrum Dying? Or Are We Just Doing It Wrong?
Scrum used to be king. Now people don’t even want it on their CV.
Remember when being a Product Owner was cool? When Scrum Masters were change agents, not glorified note-takers?
When saying “we use Scrum” signalled progressive, Agile thinking?
Fast forward to now, and you’ll find Product Owners ashamed of the title, Scrum Masters sidelined, and developers stuck in factory-mode delivery.
Teams are jumping ship to SAFe, Kanban, or “whatever Spotify did,” chasing results Scrum couldn’t deliver.
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Is it ever OK to deviate from the Scrum Guide? - Mike Cohn
I’m out there on social media and I see all the same posts you do about the sanctity of the Scrum rules. And I get it. There are many rules of Scrum that teams break when they shouldn’t. But I don’t think it does anyone any good to be so hung up on rules that you throw practicality out the window.
Here’s the thing: No team should break a Scrum rule before they’ve tried to do it by the book for a while, and given themselves a chance to understand why each rule exists in the first place.
But teams that have been doing Scrum together for a while sometimes need to bend a few Scrum rules to fit their specific circumstances and situation. And in most cases no one needs to start calling foul if they do!
Here are a few common rules most teams can safely break or bend:
Never extending a sprint is a great rule. Usually. Can it be broken? Yes—not often and always for a good reason (such as a holiday that makes a longer sprint sensible).
It’s ideal to have a dedicated Scrum Master–it’s the best way to build high-performing teams. But having a dedicated Scrum Master is an economic decision and it may not always be justified, especially once the team can take on some responsibilities for itself.
Having a retrospective every sprint is a wonderful way to put improvement front and center. But if a team is running one or two-week sprints and things are going well, I think it’s OK for them to only do a retrospective every four weeks (or every other sprint).
Teams that are new to Scrum should do Scrum by the book. But it’s unrealistic to expect teams to never bend or break a rule to better fit their context.
Knowing when to follow the rules, and when to break them, helps teams succeed,
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