I’m entering the final stretch of writing for my new book so it is time to think hard about the name. “How I write books” was only ever a working title, now I think I’ve hit on the permanent name “Books to be written“. What do you think? Let me know – you can check out the (nearly finished) book on LeanPub right now. Almost all the chapters are now drafted. The post Books to be written appeared first on Allan Kelly ..read more

I was recently asked to do a short introduction to OKRs for the Digital Leaders conference. The recording is now online and focuses on the benefits of OKRs. Naturally, I put the emphasis in different places to others! Let me now that you think: OKRs in 26 Minutes. The post OKRs in 26 Minutes (video) appeared first on Allan Kelly ..read more

Do you struggle with an overwhelming backlog? Do you count the number of product backlog items in your backlog in tens? hundred? or thousands? Does your backlog contain many stories which have been there for months, if not years, and yet never raise to the top of the backlog? Is your success judged on your ability to do the backlog? Backlogs were a good idea when they were introduced a bit over 20 years ago but today many teams slaves to the backlog – see my posts on the Tyranny of the backlog and Purpose over backlog. One of the benefits I’ve called out for OKRs is the ability to move away f ..read more

Noel Warnell was so impressed with Succeeding with OKRs in Agile that he created this infographic to go with the book – thank you, Noel! Subscribe to my blog newsletter and get Continuous Digital for free The post Succedding with OKRs in Agile Infographic appeared first on Allan Kelly ..read more

“Hello Allan , I followed a few of your seminars on OKRs and I am reading your book.  I do have one question. I will start a transformation soon. The company has the ambition to move to Scrum and also OKRs; Do you have any advise on where to start? OKRs first or SCRUM first.  Thank you a lot !” This question appeared in my mailbox – or rather my LinkedIn box – a few weeks ago and I thought other readers might be interested in my answer. My answer is: do both together. That will sound ambitious if you see Scrum and OKRs as distinct things but I don’t, to me they are synergistic an ..read more

I’ve contributed a piece on key results to the Zokri blog so wonder over there and read “Getting key results right“. Actuallyu, the original idea for that post came from a desire to improve Succeeding with OKRs in Agile, I’m starting to think about a second edition with some revisions adn addtions. The post Getting key results right appeared first on Allan Kelly ..read more

Try pouring a bottle of milk into a glass with milk already in it. You have a choice: stop or tidy up the mess afterwards. That is my work-in-progress (WIP) analogy, if you try and do too much – no mater how much you want to do it – you will end up with a mess. Agile folk are well versed in the problems created by too much WIP and how to deal with it – check out the Stockless Production video if you want to see. In the last six months I’ve been seeing a particular variant on this problem with I’ve come to label the Excess Strategic WIP problem. In the latest report the manager told me how the ..read more

Most of the sprint goals I’ve ever seen are rubbish. Pretty much “do the random collection of stuff we’ve decided already.” Such goals are meaningless – save time by skipping them. If a team adopts OKRs then I really hope they move towards more goal based working, in which case the sprint goal starts to have meaning again – although maybe the OKR replaces the sprint goal? Either way, I see an opportunity to move away from backlog driven development (BLDD) and towards a more purposeful style of working. So it was interesting a few weeks ago when Gareth Davies from Parabol (online meeting exer ..read more

Regular readers will know I write books – quite a few by now, it gets embarrassing. Being an author is a great conversation starter, when people hear you’ve written a book or two they want to know more – everyone seems to have a dream of writing their own book. It also means that people seek me out to ask my advice about a book they are writing, or thinking about writing. So, I’ve started to write down all the advice I give to people in a new book – How I write books. I’m following my usual pattern so you can buy early versions on LeanPub now – I released it last week and it immediately sold ..read more

The only thing you can do wrong in agile is to work the same way you did 3 months ago. Corollary: The opposite of agile is static. “The only thing you can do wrong” is born out of two things: my belief that agile is all about learning and putting learning into action. Second, the proliferation of “agile tests” – maturity models, things like the Nokia Scrum test and the mental models in our own minds which condemn teams . Failing these tests means you label the team something like “Agile in name only”, “ScumBut” or “ScrummerFall”. I’ve seen my own share of these teams but honestly, I don’t ..read more