Coach Dan's Blog

Are You “Sprinting” Or Just “Running?” TLDR: A Sprint without a Goal isn’t a Sprint — it’s just a random collection of tasks. If you want a team that’s focused, empowered, and actually delivering value (instead of just “checking boxes”), it’s time to stop treating your backlog like a grocery list and start planning with purpose. I was thinking about the concept of “focus” the other day, and I realized something that made me feel a little bit uncomfortable: a lot of us aren’t actually sprinting . We’re just… running. We’ve got the ceremonies down. We have Daily Standups, Retros, and a Backlog that’s as long as a teenager’s Christmas list. But when I ask, “What are we trying to achieve this sprint?” I get a lot of blank stares, or worse, someone reads me a list of ten unrelated Jira tickets. If your Sprint is just a bucket for “stuff that needs to get done,” you aren’t building a product — you’re managing a queue. You aren’t driving toward an outcome, you are pushing for output...

TLDR ;  Over-prescribed "recipe" stories accidentally turn your experts into disengaged order-takers, leading to uninspired products and leadership burnout. By shifting the focus from technical instructions to user problems, you reclaim your own time and empower your team to take full ownership of the solution. Stop Writing Recipes, Start Building Problem Solvers How to Unlock Your Team’s Full Potential We often talk about "empowerment" and "agency". They show up in almost every team, department or company town-hall meeting like bright beacons of light. But if you think about it, for a squad, these aren't just words - they are what takes a team from clocking in to actually caring. I’ve seen this play out so many times. When we hand a team a "solution-oriented" story - essentially a step-by-step recipe - we think we’re helping. In reality, we’re inadvertently sending a message: "I’ve already done the thinking; I just need your to do the w...

There's been something that's been on my mind lately, and I can't quite get my head wrapped around an answer. I figured at this point, instead of just puzzling over it - the best thing I can do is just ask y'all what you think. So here goes... What's stopping you? Seriously, what's stopping you? We've been working on this "agile thing" now for quite some time. People have been trained on the mindset. PowerPoint decks, and playbooks have been distributed. Workshops have been conducted. Scrum and Kanban has been installed. Teams have been formed and registered them in a database. Jira and confluence have been rolled out. Dashboards full of metrics have been published. That means we're agile, right? Maybe, I guess. But for those of you who have started your agile team journey together, let me ask you this... do you feel agile? Does it feel like you are closely connected to the customer and business problems that you're helping to so...

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  Fair  warning - Coach Dan is feisty today! Wherever I get in front of a group of people who are newer to the concept of agile and agility, I like to ask them what they think agile is all about.  The responses I get are pretty predictable... "Agile is about going faster."   "Agile makes teams more efficient."   "Agile is about speed."   Agile is about sprints."  "Agile is about being flexible."  "Agile is about Metrics." I very rarely, if ever hear someone suggest,  "agile is a way of reorganizing our teams around delivering customer value, rather than around artificial organizational boundaries."   I hardly ever hear someone say,  "Agile means empowering teams to self-organize around the work that they are doing to drive value, rather than organizing around job title."   And I never hear people say, "Agile means teams can decide to improve the way they work together, becoming more  effective, eff...

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Hello agile teammates!  Can I get real with you for a minute?  I want to share something that really gets my dander up...  I don't know about you, but when I hear folks refer to our agile team events as "meetings" I get a special kind of cranky!  Let me explain...   As you all are very aware of by now, agile teams are built around a set of shared values and principles we call " the agile mindset ."  The first shared value of that mindset is: Individuals and interactions  over process and tools Now - tools and processes are valuable... they really help a team stay focused on their shared objectives (which of course is to deliver values for our customers while we achieve business outcomes!)  This may be an unpopular opinion, but I'll make the argument anyway - Agile team events are not a process, nor are they a step in a process.  They are not a box to be checked or a form to be stamped.  They are an  opportunity  for a cross-fun...