Category: Leadership

Scrum Changes: Self-Organisation vs Self-Management

The new version of Scrum (2020) says teams should be self-managing. What does this mean and what are the impacts for managers?

Executive agility: To be able to pivot and respond effectively in times of change

How do executives ensure their agile teams remain productive and how do you create a culture that can pivot and adapt to meet market changes? How to create the measures to help you steer when the speed of change is rapid and understand the leading indicators to track to reduce your risk profile.

Setting up a New Agile Team

When setting up new agile teams we have found that starting small with the basics and adding patterns as they start to develop capability has helped us get new teams up and running within 2-3 days and acheive a baseline of agile capability within 3 months

IAG · 200% Executive capability built before the programme began

IAG executives built portfolio leadership capability before the programme commenced. ZXM diagnosed the readiness gap.

Nestlé Foods Oceania · Six months to market

Six months to market at Nestlé Foods Oceania — six siloed workstreams replaced with one cross-functional Sprint cadence.

Big Upfront Planning is Out. Pivoting to Respond to Change is In

With uncertainty at an all time high, the response of many organisations in those early days was to batten down the hatches and the impact may be felt for many months to come. To survive through this, big up front planning will be out and pivoting to respond to change will be the new normal.

Want to be an Agile Coach? Being a Lean Agile Leader and Practitioner is key!

If your an agile coach, just knowing Agile, or Scrum, or how to set up a Kanban board won’t be enough to get you though the complexities involved in successfully performing the role and being an agile leader. Seek to expand your knowledge and capabilities and practice intentionally as part of your own continuous improvement.

Strategies for successfully leading remote agile teams

Leading remote agile teams was always going to be tricky. Implementing these 6 strategies can help leaders reduce team stress, address concerns about work progress, increase productivity for the teams, and restore and maintain healthy communication channels.

Rapid pivoting and responsiveness will be the “new normal”

Rapidly pivoting to new priorities and understanding what can be done now to solve immediate impediments to work are the new normal for executives. Their need to be more responsive has led to rapid acceleration of digital transformation plans and business agility.

How do you go from siloed reporting to organisational-wide transparency of value and priorities?

Every executive is familiar with the hours long weekly meetings where senior leaders report to the CIO. When the world is rapidly changing and whole divisions work remotely, comprehensive formal reports are good but outdated by the time they’re written.