Author: Ben Linders

This author has written 391 articles

Doing a retrospective when you can’t get the team to meet?

Over the years I've had some situations where I couldn't get a team to come together in a retrospective to meet and reflect on the sprint. I've seen two different kinds of reasons for this. One was that a team wasn't convinced that agile was suitable for them, so they questioned doing agile retrospectives. The other situation was that the team believed in agile and Scrum and wanted to do a retrospective, but was looking for an alternative solution where they would not have to meet physically. Something that also a dispersed team would consider when travelling isn't an option. Let's explore how you can recognize these situations and deal with them.

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Read more about the article Should you measure defects?

Should you measure defects?

Regularly I get questions if you can measure defects and if you should measure them. The short answer is: You can measure them, and it can have value to do so, but only if you take action. Quality matters, and defects can provide you with valuable information about the quality of your product, but measuring alone doesn't improve quality. You need to dive deeper to have a good understanding and then act upon that.

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Why Scrum masters shouldn’t be the one solving all impediments

Who should be handling and solving impediments? Should it be the Scrum master? The team as a whole! Their agile coach? I prefer that team members recognize and solve impediments themselves. For most of them they don't need a Scrum master or coach. So if they see a problem, I expect team members to take action and solve it.

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Read more about the article Continuous Improvement Matters in Agile

Continuous Improvement Matters in Agile

I gave a well received keynote about Continuous Improvement in Agile at 1st conference in Melbourne, Australia. In this talk I explained the need for continuous improvement when adopting agile ways of working, explored how continuous improvement is engrained in agile, and what you can do to increase the agility of your teams and the organization as a whole.

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Doelen en Agile: Hoe werkt dat?

Als een organisatie besluit om agile in te voeren dan wordt er vaak ook gesproken over doelen. Mijn ervaring is dat agile als doel stellen niet werkt, agile is een middel dat kan helpen om effectiever te worden en daarmee dichter bij je doel te komen. Goed omgaan met doelen speelt wel een belangrijke rol bij het behalen van succes en resultaten met agile. Doelen en agile, hoe werkt dat? Hier zijn mijn tips.

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Read more about the article Leren en Continu Verbeteren in Agile

Leren en Continu Verbeteren in Agile

Het Agile Manifesto beschrijft dat teams frequent reflecteren om hun effectiviteit te verbeteren. Je kunt Agile Retrospectives gebruiken om te leren van hoe dingen nu gaan en de manier van werken in Agile-teams aan te passen om continu te verbeteren. Dit eerste artikel van een serie over agile retrospectives geeft een introductie in retrospectives en beschrijft hoe je kunt zorgen voor veiligheid zodat mensen open en eerlijk kunnen zijn.

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Handling Impediments: Increasing Your Effectivity

Although the steps described in the series of posts on dealing with impediments sound rather straightforward and easy, solving impediments is often perceived as stressful and difficult by many people. In the previous posts I described how you can recognize and understand impediments, find effective solutions, and decide what to do to solve them. This last post explores what you can do to become more effective in dealing with impediments.

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