Silicon Review names ZXM as one of the 50 Smartest Companies for 2016
We are excited to announce that we have been named by the Silicon Review as one of the 50 smartest
Menu
New at the Blog
Our experts talk about what it means to solve complex client problems with 21st century frameworks and practices.
Agile Product Ownership and the Role of the Business Analyst
As part of the IIBA stream at the recent Australian Computer Society Conference #ACSCanCon16, I explored agile product ownership and
Beyond Lean UX: Making Enterprise Agility and Scrum more User-Centred
We get the best feedback from working software over documentation, says Alistair Cockburn when commenting recently on the Agile Manifesto.
Dealing with Dysfunction: using couples counselling patterns to manage team conflict
Is your team dysfunctional? Is their behaviour likely headed down a path that will destroy their productivity and collaboration? If
The 8 Elements of Agile Coaching
There are quite a few ideas circulating about what makes a good agile coach. Should they be a senior developer with excellent coding prowess? Do they need technical skills? Should they be something more? ZXM’s model is founded in contingency-based leadership and reinforces the need to take a product agnostic view, a non-software perspective, on how to support agile teams.
Confessions of a Scrum Mum – how the short term heroics don’t scale
As an Agile Coach and Chief Scrum Master responsible for 8 teams in a service delivery program, when things went
Moving to Agile: What’s the difference between a project manager and a product owner?
When making the decision to adopt an agile method like Scrum, invariably the question about existing roles arises. In particular,
What's the difference between Waterfall and Scrum?
“But isn’t that just doing mini-waterfalls?”, asked a recent attendee at one of our Agile Essentials courses. Scrum requires the
ZXM named in the top 25 Most Promising Agile Solution Providers APAC 2016
We were really excited and humbled to be named in CIO Outlook’s top 25 Agile Solution providers in APAC 2016. CIO
Specialist Team Members within a Scrum Team – Testers
In my previous post on Business Analysts as Specilaist Team members within a Scrum team noted, individual team members may
Specialist Team Members within a Scrum Team – Business Analyst
Whilst individuals within a Scrum development team may have specialist skills and areas of focus, accountability to deliver the Sprint
The Master Scrum Master – Scaling your Scrum Master capability in Government
Whilst Scrum Teams are self-organising and empowered, at scale, the Master Scrum Master (i.e. Chief Scrum Master) provides coordination and alignment to
The Four Principles of Forming Effective Governance of a Release Train
I’ve been working with a number of government agencies as they look to Agile methodologies to help them implement their digital
Release Train Engineer – The Master Scrum Master
When scaling agile at an enterprise level, coordination and alignment across multiple teams is challenging. Whilst Agile teams are self-organising
Who *should* be your Product Owner?
Who should be your (Scrum) Product Owner? I’ve had a number of these conversations recently with small, boutique software development
Growing Pains – Scaling Agile to achieve greater capability in service delivery
The team I was working with had a “great problem” – more work than we could deliver. However this success
Agile adoption & helping to change organisational culture
This presentation given at LAST 2014 (Melbourne, Australia) and Agile 2014 (Orlando, USA) outlines ZXM’s behavioural approach to changing culture to
How to Teach your Team Scrum in Three Months
We tend to think about agile as a software development approach, but it has applications to the business as it
What is Lean Coffee?
Lean Coffee is an structured but agenda less meeting that allows participants to gather, build and talk. It’s a great way to run Retrospectives by crowd-sourcing what the team really want to talk about.
The Lean, Agile PMO
Presentation at the Australian Computer Society 2013, Canberra Australia. In a modern world of agile processes and self-managing teams, what
Scrum Coaching in Canberra — Top 5 tips for using Scrum in Government
What does it take to produce results when using Scrum in a highly regulated, hierarchical, and often risk-averse culture like a government organisation? Here’s ZXMs top 5 tips.
The Lion, the Mouse and the Thorn of Usability Testing
Presentation at Agile 2013, Nashville USA. [gigya src=”http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”450″ height=”400″ bgcolor=”#ffffff” flashvars=”prezi_id=4lepbbbgfxxw&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0″]
PRINCE2 processes vs Agile development frameworks
PRINCE2 has been the gold standard for project management certification for over a decade. It’s commonly a prerequisite for project managers and is recognised as being essential for keeping projects “in control”, but does this make project management incompatible with Scrum? How do you put the two together?
Focusing on User Tasks to Deliver a Better Customer Experience
On one of my recent projects, we were asked to deliver a new Information Architecture for a government website that
Beyond the new new product development game
Keynote presentation at Product Camp Sydney, 2013 [gigya src=”http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”450″ height=”400″ bgcolor=”#ffffff” flashvars=”prezi_id=yxy_jtee1jfg&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0″]
Applying a Psychology Based Model to Improve Business Processes
Often, when we find out that we don’t know something that may be important to know, it motivates us to
Patterns for breaking down usability and UX re-work
So you’ve just finished usability testing in your Sprint and have a pile of changes for your agile team to implement. How do you break down the UX changes that are needed to make a product useful, usable and accessible, into smaller, bite-sized User Stories?
Usability testing in Scrum environments — Presentation at Scrum Australia 2013
Traditionally, all testing, including assessing how easy real users can use your software, occurs in the very last phase of
Why Training Courses are killing your chance to be Agile
It seems like agile training courses are sprouting up everywhere here in Australia. I seem to even be getting emails
Lean UX. Is it *really* about start-ups or something more profound?
The UX Pin have produced a great infographic in an attempt to describe the differences between Lean UX and Agile
Demystifying Agile: How much documentation is enough?
How much documentation is enough for an agile project? Scrum doesn’t explicitly state what requirements are necessary to document during a Sprint
UX working a Sprint ahead is full of FAIL. Work as a single team instead.
It usually happens this way. Adoption of agile methods begins with developers. This is because, according to the Agile Manifesto,
Designing for Mobile vs Desktop – what are the key differences?
Australians are now the largest users of smartphones in the world[1] with reports suggesting that up to 86% own a
Upcoming conferences — Agile Australia, Scrum Australia and Agile (Nashville) 2013
This is looking to be a big year for Zen Ex Machina on the conference front. We’re hoping to return
Usability testing in Agile environments
I had the pleasure of returning to a Team I had been doing Scrum coaching with earlier in the year
Why Agile doesn’t work and what to do about it
With one of our offices in Canberra — the seat of the Federal Government in Australia — I’ve been hearing
Stay up to date:
Stay up to date:
Copyright © Zen Ex Machina® and ™ (2021). All rights reserved. ABN 93 153 194 220
Copyright © Zen Ex Machina® and ™ (2021). All rights reserved. ABN 93 153 194 220
