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Culture & Methods

Maybe Agile Is the Problem

“Agile” now means anything, everything, and nothing. Many organizations are Agile fatigued, and the “Agile Industrial Complex” is part of the problem. Agilists must go back to the basics and simplicity of the Manifesto and 12 Principles. The Heart of Agile and Modern Agile are examples of basic, simple frameworks. Agilists also have much to learn from social sciences.

Mo Hagar
on Jun 13, 2019
Culture & Methods

Scaling Agile in a Data-Driven Company

The IT department of Cerved Group experimented with Scrum, Kanban, Lean, SAFe, and Nexus, to learn what works for them and fine-tune and continuously improve their way of working. In their transformation, they focused on the culture and mindset to cultivate high-performing teams, to improve the quality of products for customers, and to help managers transforming themselves in servant leaders.

Antonello Mantuano Ben Linders
on Oct 25, 2018
Culture & Methods

Scaling Autonomy at Zalando

Autonomy isn't something you can just give to a team, it’s something that teams learn and earn over time. It has to come with accountability to amplify working towards a purpose. At Zalando, creating the right architecture and organizational structure reduced the amount of alignment needed and freed up the energy to be more thorough where alignment is needed.

Ben Linders Eric Bowman
on Sep 30, 2018
Culture & Methods

The Future-Ready Organization: An Interview with Agile Manifesto Co-Author Arie Van Bennekum

Co-Author of the Agile Manifesto and Thought Leader, Arie van Bennekum is probably one of the rare co-authors of the Agile Manifesto who never lost touch with the essence of agile. To become agile, people and organizations must shift to a totally different paradigm. Arie designed an Integrated Agile Transformation Model, a proven approach to transforming organizations to new agile paradigms.

Shaaron A Alvares
on Aug 24, 2018
Culture & Methods

Holacracy for Humans

Snapper, a New Zealand based transport ticketing service provider, wanted to be more like a city, and less like a bureaucratic corporation. In 2016 they introduced Holacracy, which enables people to act more like entrepreneurs and self-direct their work instead of waiting to be told what to do. They use Holacracy across all areas of the business and this way of working applies to everyone.

Sandy Mamoli
on Mar 03, 2018
Culture & Methods

Culture May Eat Agile for Breakfast

Making culture your priority during the scaling phase of your organization is a sound business decision. You have to invest by hiring for mindset and educating everyone joining the organization in agile principles to prevent turning an existing agile culture into a traditional one.

Stefan Wolpers
on May 05, 2017
Culture & Methods

What Exactly is the Agile Mindset?

We hear, and even use, the phrase “agile mindset.” But what is it, really? In this article several themes are identified, such as respect, ability to change, and focus on delivering value. Additionally, possible methods for introducing and nurturing these themes are identified.

Susan McIntosh
on Aug 28, 2016
Culture & Methods

Is There a Correlation Between Employee Happiness and Agile?

This article examines the agile culture and explores how it helps create a happy environment. It questions the practices and attitudes evident in some of the Tech Titan organisations, and questions if they actually want to achieve employee satisfaction and sustainable pace. Perhaps the Tech Titans leadership doesn’t want Agile because Agile isn’t good for their questionable labor behavior?

Joe Fecarotta
on Dec 09, 2015
Culture & Methods

Building Flat Organizations with Cross-functional Teams and Fewer Managers

Hierarchical organizations can't react to new market opportunities and changes fast enough, this impedes the company’s survival in the long run. An interview with Michael Dubakov on how agile transformations impact the role of managers, how to change the culture to increase agility, how to flatten an organization using cross-functional teams, and benefits from increasing agility.

Ben Linders
on Nov 30, 2015
Culture & Methods

Peopleware 2015 - An Interview with Bradley Scott of Xero

At the Agile New Zealand conference Bradley Scott gave a talk on Peopleware 2015 in which he explained the management structures, policies and approaches Xero has used to support its agile transition. He discussed how they worked and presented some ideas on the future of management. After the talk he spoke to InfoQ about his ideas.

Shane Hastie
on Nov 22, 2015
Culture & Methods

What Makes Joy,Inc Work? Part 1 - the Menlo Way

Having read Joy,Inc and heard Rich Sheridan talk about the Menlo Innovations way, I wanted to understand if this was real and if so how the ideas could be applied elsewhere so I spent a week there. This is the first of three articles and looks at what the Menlo way is and how it evolved.

Shane Hastie
on Nov 05, 2015
Making a Difference: a Case Study of Change in the Public Sector

At Spark the Change 2015, Tracy Jelfs shared a case study of change in Children’s Services at Monmouthshire Council. Spark attracts the UK’s most innovative organisations, and this story impressed leaders from many different industries. It is a showcase of how radical change is possible even in difficult circumstances – from poor performance and low morale to a heavily regulated environment.

Helen Walton
on Jul 30, 2015