Failure is not usually something organisations want to talk about.
We prefer words like delivery, progress, efficiency and success. Those are good things. But in Agile work, some of the most important learning comes from small failures that happen early enough to do something about them.
The key is not to avoid failure completely.
The key is to make failure safe enough, small enough and visible enough that the team can learn from it.
Continue reading What teams taught me by failing safelyAgile is often described as a way to deliver work faster.
That is not wrong, but it is incomplete.
At its best, Agile is not simply a delivery framework. It is a learning system. It helps teams discover what is true, what is valuable, what is possible and what needs to change.
Continue reading Agile as a learning system, not a delivery frameworkOne of the most persistent misunderstandings about the Scrum Master role is that it exists to enforce process.
Seen this way, the Scrum Master becomes a kind of process police officer – checking attendance, correcting behaviour and reminding people what Scrum says should happen.
But that framing misses the point of the role entirely.
Scrum does not exist to be obeyed.
It exists to help teams work effectively in complexity.
And complexity does not respond well to enforcement.
Just a quick warning about ordering things from Amazon Marketplace: make sure you read the details about how they will deliver your item.
I ordered something the other day, and I assumed like many of the other products that it said:
Delivery: In stock. Dispatched from United Kingdom. International delivery available.
But I didn’t read closely enough. I just skim read it. Like when you skim read jam labels, and fail to see that it’s actually been made of bees and hay.
It actually read:
Delivery: In stock. Dispatched from United Kingdom. Irrational delivery available.
Thankfully I live in the UK, so it didn’t affect me. But be warned!
