Have you ever walked away from a meeting thinking you had just witnessed a thing of beauty?  It does not happen to me very often, but I was fortunate enough to witness that twice this year.

For the past three months, I have been working closely with one project to improve their production management processes. They were already working with a basic implementation of Agile project management with Scrum, but they reached a stage in the project where they needed to take what they were doing to the next level. The […]

Now that we’ve established the realities of being a manager, what are the real rewards?  Being a manager is a tough job, so what keeps us going?  It’s not power, money or being able to get your own way all the time and you’ll likely be expected to lend a hand to the team from […]

Often in professional development discussions young team members bring up the topic of becoming a manager.  My first question is always, “Why?”  As the conversation continues, I usually have to practice the 5 Why’s to get to the heart of the matter and I can share the truth about being a manager. As a manager, […]

If a process or a product hasn’t been going well for a while, frustration builds and some leaders try to fix it  by looking for solutions from wherever and from whomever they can.  This results in multiple parallel conversations and/or the team chasing after a dozen or more perceived solutions to the problem.  While everyone […]

This month I am working closely with one of our production teams to help fix some process issues.  I thought I would discuss my approach each week as a sort of diary on improving an Agile process.  Out of respect to the project team, I can’t give any context or details of the project itself.  […]