New at the Blog

Our experts talk about what it means to solve complex client problems with 21st century frameworks and practices.

What is an Agile Coach?

There are a lot of misconceptions about what an Agile Coach is or isn’t at the moment. Are they the Scrum Master of a team? Does their role include coaching the team or is is something more?

What does an Agile Coach do during a Sprint?

To truly drive cultural and behavioural change takes time. It also takes experience. He’s what effective agile coaches do every Sprint. The list might surprise you.

Agile metrics for your enterprise: OKRs are out. EBM is in.

Align the work of your whole enterprise to realising value with Evidence Based Management.

What does it take to turn a PMO into a Lean-Agile Portfolio Management group?

What does a PMO look like in a scaled agile, product focussed environment? ZXM helped W.A. Police with this tricky part of their agile transformation.

Increase transparency to reduce scaled-agile risk

One of the biggest advantages stemming from good scaled-agile practice is the benefit of enhanced transparency. This helps to manage and reduce risk.

How do I run Backlog Refinement

Backlog Refinement is a critical part of good practice in Scrum. Refining the Product Backlog ensures that the Team and Product Owner have sufficiently defined Product Backlog Items so that Sprint Planning runs more smoothly and without surprises.

Top 5 insights to turn strategic initiatives into action

Matthew Hodgson, CEO of Zen Ex Machina, presented at Gartner Symposium ITXpo on his 5 insights into getting twice as much in half the time in a way that addresses leadership, cultural change and operating models.

Improve feedback with a Feedback Dojo

To achieve positive changes in behaviour feedback needs to come from a foundation of trust, delivered at the right time, in a private space.

R U OK – Sustainable pace in the workplace and Stress Busters

Earlier this month, I was asked to present for R U OK day at one of our clients sites.

5 tips for executives getting started with agile

Getting started with agile can be daunting. So what are the real questions you should be asking? It all starts with teams and understanding that agile is not just for software or the people that report to you.

How to survive the Zombie Scrum Apocalypse

Well, at first sight Zombie Scrum seems to be normal Scrum. But it lacks a beating heart.

Agile Strategic Planning for Executives

Can you predict the future? Can it really be planned in the 21st century? In the face of relentless technological change, disruptive forces in industry after industry, global competition, and so on, strategic planning often seems like pointless wishful thinking.

Couples Counseling for Scrum Teams – Global Scrum Gathering Austin 2019

In this talk, ZXM CEO Matthew Hodgson, presents to the Global Scrum Gathering in Austin on patterns from Gottman and social psychology research to help

ZXM wins Corporate Excellence Award for Agile Training and Consultancy 2019

Zen Ex Machina is a leading Agile transformation company. Following our success in CV’s Corporate Excellence Awards, Zen Ex Machina was profiled and CV magazine

Agile Leadership

What does it take to be an agile leader? 21st century leaders face a raft of challenges: technological change, disruptive forces in industry after industry, and global competition. What does leadership look like in a VUCA, highly disruptive world?

Demystifying Agile Estimation and Planning

Estimating in hours can be highly inaccurate. Estimating using relative wide band delphi like planning poker is key to understanding what you can do and when you can do it by as a team.

Agile Strategic Planning

Can you predict the future? Can it be planned in the 21st century?In the face of relentless technological change, disruptive forces in industry after industry,

Evidenced Based Management – Measuring value to enable improvement and Business Agility

Organisations invest in agile processes, tools, training, and coaching, but how much are they getting back? Has product delivery improved? How much happier are users and the

What does a Product Owner do and who should fulfil this role?

What does a Product Owner do? Is it a full time job? Are they the customer? Are they the business owner of the IT system? While it’s been nearly 20 years since the role of “Product Owner” emerged from Scrum few people still understand what a “Product Owner” is and does.

What makes a good coach?

Agile coaching is not for the faint hearted. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very rewarding, but sometimes it’s difficult when there is a lot of

Executive Agility

Many people are starting to recognise that agile has a lot to offer outside software development, but where do you start? Leadership support is critical

APAC CIO Outlook recognises ZXM as a Top 10 Agile Solution Provider 2018

ZXM was again recognised by APAC CIO Outlook as one of thw Top 10 Agile Solution Providers for the second year in a row. Revitalising

Strategic Planning in Agile

What does strategic planning in agile look like? Do we need to fully understand and agree on a strategy before we proceed to deliver new

ZXM named in Top 10 Innovative Agile Solution Providers 2018

Insights Success magazine recently release its Sept issue featuring the 10 Most innovative Agile Solution providers. Very excited that ZXM was named as one of

Isn't Agile really just a series of small experiments to build experience and learning

The State of Agile Report (Version One) consistently shows that the reason why most agile projects fail, is lack of experience. Knowledge will only get

Delivering Policy with Business Agility

How do you deliver a big policy outcome that normally takes 6 months when you only have weeks? Use Kanban WITH Scrum!

Accelerate Through Retrospectives

Teams were bored with their Retrospectives. I was bored. They were just doing mechanical Scrum. Retrospectives are such a powerful tool to drive continuous improvement, so here’s what we did to fix the problem.

Is a self-organising agile team a self-managing agile team?

The Agile Manifesto highlights that “the best architectures, requirements and designs emerge from self-organising teams”. Scrum also reinforces that the Development Team (the people developing

Estimating without a baseline

Agile Teams tend to use relative estimation rather than creating tasks, estimating hours, and then adding up all the hours. Adding up hours it fundamentally

Relative Estimating and Sizing Stories

How should we size Stories? Not by hours but through looking at new work relative to the size we gave to old work.

Getting Sizing Right with Cycle Time

Sizing in Story Points represents a significant shift from estimating in hours. Understanding cycle time is key to getting it right.

ZXM CIO recognised as one of the Most Influential Women in Scrum Coaching – Australia 2018

Recently CV Magazine profiled the creative coaching team before speaking to Mia Horrigan to find out more about the company and its extensive achievements after

Psychological Safety: Patterns from Child Psychology to Build Safety in Teams

In this presentation, ZXM’s Partner for Agile Enterprise Transformation, Matthew Hodgson, looks at psychological safety through the lens of a psychological, research-based approach to creating

APAC CIO Advisor names ZXM in Top 10 Agile Solution Companies 2017

ZXM was excited to be named in the top 10 for Agile Solution Companies 2017 by APAC CIO Outlook Magazine Executive Coaching for Business Agility

Two Teams but Oh so Different

What makes one team Scrumdiddlyumptious whilst another the Killjoys? At LAST Conference this week, I discussed a tale of two new agile teams within the

To spike or not to spike?

So, what actually is a Spike? Where does the term come from and should all agile teams use them?

New at the Blog

Our experts talk about what it means to solve complex client problems with 21st century frameworks and practices.

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