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Agile Coach at Berlin Product People GmbH
About
Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org, agile coach, and Scrum Master based in Berlin. Stefan also curates the weekly ”Food for Agile Thought” newsletter on best posts on agile practices, product management, and innovation—with 35,000-plus subscribers. (See @AgeOfProduct.) Also, he hosts the Hands-on Agile Slack community with more than 12,000 peers.
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Articles: | 94 |
Comments: | 45 |
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Jul 08, 2023 · Stefan Wolpers
Thanks for the Kudos! Best, Stefan
Mar 08, 2023 · Stefan Wolpers
I agree, Alan. As so often, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Jan 10, 2023 · Stefan Wolpers
I would like to train a support chatbot to help with everyday questions when no other support, for example, from the community is available. Also, I would be interested in a sparring partner to get a better understanding about a specific topic or thought.
Apr 27, 2022 · Stefan Wolpers
Explain what?
Dec 16, 2021 · Stefan Wolpers
https://age-of-product.com/scrum-anti-patterns/
Oct 26, 2021 · Stefan Wolpers
In my world, the team is regularly refactoring the application — it is part of the daily job. Hence there is no need to do what you describe.
Sep 22, 2021 · Stefan Wolpers
It is about the conversation; not the numbers. Think CCC.
May 09, 2021 · Stefan Wolpers
How is that relevant for the article?
Aug 18, 2020 · Stefan Wolpers
"Valet" — I like the coining!
Aug 17, 2020 · Stefan Wolpers
I was referring to the moment when people wait in-line to share with others. The newer version of the article can be found here: https://age-of-product.com/stand-up-anti-patterns/
Jul 23, 2020 · Stefan Wolpers
…“textbook Scrum” I have practiced successfully with more than 20 teams in 10-plus organizations.
I guess we agree to disagree.
Apr 08, 2020 · Stefan Wolpers
I absolutely agree, Patty!
Keep it simple and do not indulge in fancy tools; the law of diminishing returns applies here, too.
Nov 01, 2019 · Stefan Wolpers
It helps understand the background of traditional managers.
May 16, 2019 · Stefan Wolpers
Hi Margot,
That depends on the context — be creative!
Apr 25, 2019 · Stefan Wolpers
Thanks for the link!
Jun 05, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
Thanks for the kudos! You might be interested in downloading the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide (free PDF) as well. Next post in the coming week is the sprint retrospective.
May 26, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
I am not promoting that we live in a binary world. How would that be possible given that any organization needs to find its own of handling things? The level of how “agile” you are is always relative. The are too many variables in the equation.
Which also explains why I asked one question in the poll: to have a quick sentiment test, and more importantly, spark a discussion. And in that respect, everyone is qualified to have an opinion and participate.
May 26, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
Free your mind and hack some tools. The NPS model is a great tool to bring up and track sentiment levels. I use, for example, to run polls on confidence levels to meet release dates.
May 21, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
Thanks a lot for to hint! (The fix is submitted to review.)
May 17, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
Thanks for the kudos!
Apr 13, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
What makes you believe that? Could you be more elaborate?
Jan 08, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
I disagree, your opinion contradicts my experience as shared in the post.
Jan 07, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
And how is that helping the team to get better?
Jan 06, 2017 · Stefan Wolpers
You're referring to these “72% accomplished” metric?
Aug 04, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Totally agree, particularly on sprint review part. On some projects, they feel more like an extended version of the daily reporting routine — aka daily scrum –. And I am as well still searching for the golden key… :)
Aug 03, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Tobias, I agree. Anything that you would add?
May 10, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Ouch! Thanks for pointing at it! #fixed
Apr 07, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
I dug further into the agile micromanagement aspect in my latest post Agile Micromanagement in the Era of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
Apr 06, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Thanks for sharing the post!
Apr 06, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
You will like to my next post: "Agile Micromanagement in the Era of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose"…
Apr 06, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
I would not call agile a fraud, but it is certainly prone to be abused to serve personal agendas of the middle management.
I will publish a new post tomorrow that will dig deeper into the reasons for that.
Mar 27, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Well, turn the product owner into a someone who's solely writing user stories, get rid of the Scrum master — what are these people doing anyway the whole day —, and delegate any product decision to separate entity, and you get a sprint-based waterfall model with some agile suger-coating on top. Sad thing is, that this may work quite well in a lot of organizations.
Mar 26, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Agreed. I was just summarizing and categorizing the concerns some developers are voicing for various reasons. Some ground in failure adoptions and I have experienced them myself. Some are probably more ego-related. But see for yourself, I shared five links at the bottom oft the post. If you're interested, I can also provide some HN threads on the topic…
Mar 25, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
There has to be one, I am still optimistic… :)
Mar 25, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
I have had my fair share of such management failures, too. As I mentioned in the TL;DR of the original post:
The agile consulting industry repackages an originally human-centered, technology-driven philosophy into a standardized, all-weather project-risk mitigating methodology. Sold to command & control organizations, their middle managers turn “Agile” into a 21. century adoption of Taylorism for knowledge workers.
Mar 25, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
I started a LinkedIn group some months ao, the ‘Agile Clinic’; the dev perspective would be highly appreciated: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8435015
Feb 23, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Got it. By my understanfing, the product backlog grooming is a weekly excercise, where the PO and the team are working jointly on the user stories. It substitutes to a large part sprint planning I…
Feb 23, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
At least you got to try…
Feb 21, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
I also managed to sneak in a kind of business value poker through the backdoor that way: Getting from the external project into the "real" backlog required some pitching by the stakeholders…
Feb 17, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
That's also how I handle it. I just don't call the large one "backlog", as that might cause problems with expectation management on the stakeholder side. I usually create a different project (e.g. in Jira) for that purpose… (Okay, now I am wearing the PO hat.)
Feb 17, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Good ones, Deepak! Will enhance the list…
Jan 14, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
MY sincere apology, Serguei, I did not notice your comment earlier!
To your question: It's not about taking planning away. On the contrary. But I am convinced that "commitment meeting velocity" isn't a suitable metric for an agile team and its rate of success. Going with that is like having a planned economy, where are plans are always fulfilled…
Jan 14, 2016 · Stefan Wolpers
Thanks a lot for the feedback! I am currently working on the next release of set of questions; this time including guidance on acceptable anwers.
Jan 05, 2016 · moel
Absolutely, "fixing" projects and agile transitions seems to be an less well communicated demand – who likes to admit failure?
Jan 03, 2016 · moel
Good list of indicators!
Referrring to #6, I like to mention, though, that imposters are not necessarily external consultants. I just published a list of 38 interview questions to identify those as early in the process as possible and would appreciate your feedback. (The corresponding DZone article is still in moderation.)