#AgileTransformation
BookAuthority Named "Agile Transformation" One of the Best New Scrum Ebooks
10 June 2019
Agile Workflows
BookAuthority named Scott M. Graffius' second book, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change, as one of the best new Scrum ebooks!
About Agile Transformation
🏆 Award-winning, quick-read #agile #projectmanagement 📖 #book ‘Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change’ is available 🌐 worldwide: https://t.co/GDuxvhDgyO. pic.twitter.com/KgwoC9P0bX
— Agile Transformation Book (@AgileTransform) February 2, 2022
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits. Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a revealing behind-the-scenes account of a successful agile implementation at a global entertainment company.
Scott M. Graffius' first book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions, provides readers with practical information they can use to get benefits from the most popular agile framework, Scrum. It presents top practices from successful implementations based on Scott's hands-on experience and 116 diverse sources such as the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute, MIT, the IEEE, Gartner, and the Software Engineering Institute. The publication garnered 17 first place awards from national and international competitions. Scott and his book have been featured in Yahoo Finance, Computer Weekly, the PM World Journal, Learning Solutions, Innovation Management, and additional media publications.
In Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change, Scott shares a behind-the-scenes account of a successful agile implementation at a global entertainment company. The story is based on actual events and it's told from Scott's perspective as an agile coach. The transformation dramatically improved the way the organization works and delivers business value. New capabilities and practices enabled the enterprise to adapt to its changing environment, move faster, and drive innovation, which made it more competitive and prosperous.
Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change by Scott M. Graffius is offered in digital and print formats.
The ebook (ASIN: B07R9LJLPJ) is available in:
- Australia,
- Brazil,
- Canada,
- France,
- Germany,
- India,
- Italy,
- Japan,
- Mexico,
- the Netherlands,
- Spain,
- the United Kingdom, and
- the United States.
The paperback (ISBN-13: 9781072447962) is for sale at:
- Amazon,
- Barnes & Noble,
- and other retailers and partners in the United States and around the world.
About Author Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius is a project management expert, consultant, international speaker, and award-winning author. He is a Principal Consultant and the CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, a professional services firm, where he helps clients strengthen their project management capabilities and realize their strategic objectives and business initiatives. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects and programs in public and private companies with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. Scott's first book on agile project management, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions, garnered 17 first place awards. Scott and his book have been featured in Yahoo Finance, Computer Weekly, the Boston Herald, Learning Solutions, Informa, Innovation Management, and additional media publications. His second title, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change, was published in April 2019. Scott regularly speaks at conferences and other events around the world. For additional information on Scott, see his bio.
About BookAuthority
BookAuthority curates the books recommended by the world's most successful CEOs, business leaders, and domain experts such as Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Sheryl Sandberg, and David Allen. Only the very best books are featured on BookAuthority. To keep BookAuthority's site objective and unbiased, ratings are calculated purely based on data. BookAuthority uses a proprietary technology to identify and rate the best nonfiction books, using dozens of different signals, including public mentions, recommendations, ratings, sentiment, popularity and sales history. BookAuthority does not accept requests to feature books, nor does BookAuthority conduct business with publishers or authors. BookAuthority has been featured on CNN, Forbes and Inc. The preceding information in this section is based on content from BookAuthority.org.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Multi Award-Winning "Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions" Available in Paperback and Ebook/Kindle Worldwide
08 April 2019
Agile Workflows
This is a brief update on the distribution of the multi award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. It's available in 45 countries. Check out the links below.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — in ebook/Kindle format (ASIN: B01FZ0JIIY):
🇦🇺 Australia from Amazon.com.au
🇦🇹 Austria from Amazon.de
🇧🇪 Belgium from Amazon.fr
🇧🇷 Brazil from Amazon.com.br
🇨🇦 Canada from Amazon.ca
🇫🇷 France from Amazon.fr
🇩🇪 Germany from Amazon.de
🇮🇳 India from Amazon.in
🇮🇪 Ireland from Amazon.co.uk
🇮🇹 Italy from Amazon.it
🇯🇵 Japan from Amazon.co.jp
🇱🇮 Liechtenstein from Amazon.de
🇱🇺 Luxembourg from Amazon.de
🇲🇽 Mexico from Amazon.com.mx
🇲🇨 Monaco from Amazon.fr
🇳🇱 Netherlands from Amazon.nl
🇳🇿 New Zealand from Amazon.com.au
🇸🇲 San Marino from Amazon.it
🇪🇸 Spain from Amazon.es
🇨🇭 Switzerland from Amazon.de
🇬🇧 United Kingdom from Amazon.co.uk
🇺🇸 United States of America from Amazon.com
🇻🇦 Vatican City from Amazon.it
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — in paperback (ISBN-13: 9781533370242):
🇦🇼 Aruba from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇦🇺 Australia from Amazon.com.au
🇦🇹 Austria from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇧🇸 Bahamas from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇧🇪 Belgium from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇨🇦 Canada from Amazon.ca
🇨🇿 Czech Republic from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇩🇰 Denmark from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇫🇯 Fiji from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇫🇮 Finland from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇫🇷 France from Amazon.fr
🇩🇪 Germany from Amazon.de
🇬🇷 Greece from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇭🇺 Hungary from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇮🇸 Iceland from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇮🇳 India from Amazon.in
🇮🇪 Ireland from Amazon.co.uk
🇮🇱 Israel from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇮🇹 Italy from Amazon.it
🇯🇲 Jamaica from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇯🇵 Japan from Amazon.co.jp
🇱🇺 Luxembourg from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇲🇽 Mexico from Amazon.com.mx
🇲🇨 Monaco from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇳🇱 Netherlands from bol.com
🇳🇿 New Zealand from Fishpond.co.nz, Amazon.com (via USA), and Booktopia.com.au (via Australia)
🇳🇴 Norway from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇵🇪 Peru from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇵🇭 Philippines from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇵🇷 Puerto Rico from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇸🇬 Singapore from OpenTrolley Bookstore
🇿🇦 South Africa from Loot.co.za
🇰🇷 South Korea from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇪🇸 Spain from Amazon.es
🇸🇪 Sweden from Adlibris.com
🇨🇭 Switzerland from Bokus.com (via Sweden)
🇺🇦 Ukraine from The Book Depository (via UK/Australia)
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates from Amazon.ae
🇬🇧 United Kingdom from Amazon.co.uk, Blackwell's, and The Book Depository
🇺🇸 United States of America from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, AbeBooks, Books-a-Million, Diesel Bookstore (Santa Monica, California), Laguna Beach Books (Laguna Beach, California), Warwick’s (La Jolla, California), The Booksmith (San Francisco, California), University Press Books (Berkeley, California), Compass Books at SFO/Books Inc. (San Francisco, California), University of Arizona Bookstore (Tucson, Arizona), Strand Books (New York, New York), Hudson Booksellers (New York, New York), Harvard Book Store (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Savoy Bookshop & Café (Westerly, Rhode Island), Books & Books (Miami, Florida), and others
🇻🇳 Vietnam from U-buy.vn
Get your copy today!
About Scott M. Graffius, Author of Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions Author
Scott M. Graffius is an agile project management consultant, practitioner, award-winning author, and keynote speaker. Content from his books, speaking engagements, workshops, and more has been used by businesses, governments, and universities, including Gartner, Cisco, RSA, Ford, Qantas, Atlassian, Bayer, the United States Department of Energy, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, Texas A&M, and others. Thinkers360 named Scott a Top 20 Global Thought Leader and Influencer. His full-length bio is available at https://www.scottgraffius.com/bio.html.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
"Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions" Placed on BookAuthority's List of Best Scrum Books of All Time
24 March 2019
<Agile Workflows
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions was named one of the Best Scrum Books of All Time by BookAuthority. A screen shot is available here.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Author Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius is a technology leader, project management expert, consultant, international speaker, and award-winning author.
Scott is the CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, a professional services firm, where he partners with client companies to help them achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. The consultancy provides project, program, portfolio, and PMO management services inclusive of agile, traditional, and hybrid development and delivery frameworks. Business results include upgraded responsiveness to business needs, faster delivery and time-to-market, improved on-budget performance, higher customer and stakeholder satisfaction, and greater competitive advantage.
A fantastic agile transformation experience and result with a client in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott’s book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. It helps technical and non-technical teams develop and deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement—which supports innovation and drives competitive advantage. The book has garnered 17 first place awards from national and international competitions. Scott and Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions have been featured in Yahoo Finance, the Boston Herald, NBC WRAL, the Dallas Business Journal, the PM World Journal, BookLife by Publisher’s Weekly, Learning Solutions, Innovation Management, and additional media publications. A trailer, high-resolution images, reviews, a detailed list of awards, and more are available in the digital media kit.
Scott is a former vice president of project management with a publicly traded provider of diverse consumer products and services over the Internet. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects and programs in public and private organizations with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology products and services, retail, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. He has experience with consumer, business, reseller, government, and international markets, as well as experience spanning 20 countries.
Scott has a bachelor's degree in Psychology with a focus in Human Factors. He holds six professional certifications: Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Project Management Professional (PMP), Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (LSSGB), and IT Service Management Foundation (ITIL). He is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Within the IEEE, Graffius is a member of the Computer Society, the Consumer Electronics Society, the Broadcast Technology Society, the Internet of Things Community, and the Consultants Network.
He has been actively involved with the Project Management Institute (PMI) in the development of professional global standards. He was a member of the team which produced the Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures—Second Edition. Scott was a contributor and reviewer of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge—Sixth Edition and The Standard for Program Management—Fourth Edition. He was also a subject matter expert reviewer of content for the PMI EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Congress 2019.
Scott regularly speaks at conferences and other events in the United States and internationally where he delights audiences with presentations on agile, traditional, and hybrid project, program, portfolio, and PMO management. He integrates content on professional standards, best practices, and his first-hand experience with successful implementations. Scott uses everyday language and custom vibrant visuals to make complex topics clear and understandable, and he provides audiences with practical information they can use. Scott spoke at Techstars Startup Week and at events in London and Las Vegas. He also delivered talks at the Los Angeles chapter of the PMI, the California Central Coast chapter of the PMI, the California Inland Empire chapter of the PMI (two events), and the California Central Valley chapter of the PMI. Attendees have said “Scott is an amazing speaker,” “fantastic presentation,” and “highly recommended!” Scott’s upcoming appearances include the Project World conference in Canada and more. For additional information, visit here.
Scott resides in Los Angeles, California.
About BookAuthority (the following includes content from BookAuthority.com)
BookAuthority is the world's leading site for nonfiction book recommendations, helping you find the best books on various topics to develop your skills. It covers topics that range from startups, marketing and finance, through javascript, artificial intelligence and bitcoin, to fitness, history and personal development.
BookAuthority uses a proprietary technology to identify and rate the best nonfiction books, using dozens of different signals, including public mentions, recommendations, ratings, sentiment, popularity and sales history. This includes maintaining the most comprehensive collection of book recommendations from domain experts such as Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Daniel Kahneman, Sheryl Sandberg, and David Allen.
Only the very best books are featured on BookAuthority. To keep BookAuthority's site objective and unbiased, ratings are calculated purely based on data. BookAuthority does not accept requests to feature books, nor does BookAuthority conduct business with publishers or authors.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 1
08 March 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the first installment of the eight-part story.
Part 1: The Call
The assistant to the executive vice president (EVP) of technology for a division of a global entertainment company contacted me by phone. I was told that I was referred by someone who knew me and thought I would be a good fit for contract work. A one-hour consultation with the EVP was scheduled for the next day. I then received an email with several attachments including a non-disclosure agreement which needed to be executed and brought to the meeting.
I brought the documents to the session. The EVP explained that his division of the company was experiencing an alarming trend of problems with project management. He reported that deliverables were not meeting expectations, there was a marked decline in satisfaction, and—this was characterized as "the straw that broke the camel's back"—a highly skilled and very well-respected team member quit, citing the problems as her reason for departure.
After an hour with the EVP, we agreed to extend the meeting (initially, my complimentary consult) an additional hour (billable time). I learned that this division of the company previously used a traditional plan-driven/waterfall approach for development and delivery. The EVP explained that things worked reasonably well then and that they were "close enough" to being on-scope, on-budget, and on-time that team members and stakeholders were satisfied.
The EVP explained, however, that he wanted to adopt a model (Scrum) employed by some of the other divisions of the company. The EVP said that he conducted a search for a value-added reseller (VAR) to help his group move to agile. A VAR-partner of a popular software solution was selected, and the VAR transitioned the group to Scrum. Reportedly, very few problems surfaced during the VAR's contractual engagement, which ended two weeks into the first sprint (then, the duration for sprints was four weeks). Many problems surfaced subsequently, however. The VAR had been gone for two months at the time of my meeting with the EVP.
The EVP asked me to make things right. I explained that change depends on many people and multiple factors and that a specific end result could not be guaranteed. I suggested, however, that I'd be honored to work with his group in the first step—an assessment—which would help inform the subsequent work of foundational planning. The objectives of the assessment include working closely with the EVP, the Scrum Team and stakeholders to understand their goals—and the environment, roles and practices. He asked me when I could start. I asked him when he needed me, and he replied "immediately." I agreed to start the next day.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company continues with Part 2: The Goals.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 2
13 March 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the second installment of the eight-part story. If you haven't already read the first post, you can find it here: Part 1: The Call.
Part 2: The Goals
Highlights related to the goals follow.
The executive vice president (EVP) identified his top three desired outcomes:
- Accelerate the development and delivery of products and services—to be faster than the earlier baseline of 6-12 months,
- Improve the satisfaction of the Scrum Team—to be the same or better than it was earlier with the traditional/waterfall approach, and
- Improve the satisfaction of stakeholders—to also to be the same or better than it was earlier with the traditional/waterfall approach.
I individually met with and carefully listened to each member of the Scrum Team. There were recurring themes. We then met as a group and I asked them to identify their top two or three goals. They discussed the matter, voted, and decided on these:
- Meet or exceed the expectations of management, and
- Deliver valuable products.
I individually met with executives from different departments (the stakeholders). In every case, they related that things were OK with the earlier traditional/waterfall approach, but that things were worse now. The stakeholders indicated that, with the earlier approach, someone on the project team worked with their group to gather requirements, and around 6-12 months later the results were deployed. However, it was reported that with the then-current approach, the projects' purpose and requirements were not understood, and that what was produced was unusable. The goals of the stakeholders were:
- For them or their representatives to be as—or more—involved as earlier with the traditional/waterfall approach, and
- Get a usable product as often as—or more frequently than—earlier with the traditional/waterfall approach.
Here's a recap of everyone's goals. The EVP wants the development and delivery of products and services to be faster than 6-12 months, improved satisfaction of the Scrum Team, and improved satisfaction of stakeholders. The Scrum Team wants to meet or exceed expectations of management, and deliver valuable products. The stakeholders want (themselves or via their representatives) to be more involved in requirements/user stories and get useable project-delivered products more frequently than every 6-12 months.
Everyone permitted their goals to be shared with others. After discussing the subject with the EVP, I wrote the goals on oversize paper and posted it in a common area proximate to the Scrum Team and accessible to the stakeholders.
Highlights on the environment, roles, and practices—primarily focused on the Scrum Team—follow.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company continues with Part 3: The Environment.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 3
19 March 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the third installment of the eight-part story. If you haven't already read the earlier parts, you can find them here:
Part 3: The Environment
Highlights on the environment including roles and practices—primarily focused on the Scrum Team—follow.
I learned that the Scrum Team was composed of 16 people: one Scrum Master, one Product Owner, and 14 Development Team members. Both the Scrum Master and the Product Owner explained that they were familiar with agile, but that they had no prior work experience with agile/Scrum and no related training—except for what was provided by the value-added reseller (VAR). The Development Team consisted of 14 people: a technical architect, a UI designer, a business analyst, seven developers, three testers, and a technical writer. Eleven of the 14 members of the Development Team had no prior work experience with agile/Scrum and no related training—except for what was provided by the VAR. Of the 16 people on the Scrum Team, 15 were local (at an office in the greater Los Angeles area), and one—the Product Owner—was based out of her office in Paris, France.
Of the 16 people on the Scrum Team, two—the Scrum Master and the Product Owner—were full time on the project. All of the others were allocated about 50% on the project.
I was given a copy of the training binder left by the VAR. I was told that the contents—about 500 pages—reflected the totality of the training and reference material. The training session, led by the VAR, was attended by the Scrum Master and the all of the Development Team members. The executive vice president (EVP) attended portions. The Product Owner attended portions, listening by phone. The first page in the binder covered the Agile Manifesto, the second page was a two-column table which compared and contrasted waterfall and Scrum (e.g., waterfall freezes scope, Scrum freezes schedule), and the third page showed success rates of waterfall vs. Scrum (e.g., 29% of waterfall projects fail vs. 9% of agile projects). The remaining pages provided information about the VAR company and detailed instructions on how to use their software product. That constituted the training.
The Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team reported that they followed the training and instructions provided by the VAR. I won't delineate the then-current roles further or describe all of the events and artifacts. However, some examples follow.
The Product Owner created a product vision statement and stored it in the software, but nobody else remembered seeing it.
The Product Owner created a product backlog in the software, but nobody else claimed to have seen it.
The Scrum Master facilitated a Sprint Planning event where the Development Team estimated work in terms of complexity, and the results were recorded in the software tool. It was reported that—due to the time difference—the Product Owner did not attend Sprint Planning meetings.
It was communicated that during Sprint execution, the Scrum Master would ask the Development Team if they had any notable progress; and only if the answer was yes, there was a Daily Scrum. As a result, the Daily Scrum event occurred around once or twice a week. When the meeting took place, the Scrum Master did a quick interview with each member of the Development Team and noted the results in the software tool.
I was told that the team followed the recommendation of the VAR for the sprint duration of four weeks.
The Sprint Reviews were attended by the Scrum Master, the Product Owner (remotely), all of the Development Team members, and the EVP. However, the other stakeholders did not attend the events. On average, about half of the work planned and committed to the sprint was "done." Both "done" and not-"done" items were demonstrated at the Sprint Review.
The Scrum Master reported that the team did conduct a Retrospective event at the end of each sprint and that the results were saved in the software tool. When I reviewed the information, I saw comments such as "we worked very hard" under the what went well category. Everything under the "what didn't go so well/opportunities for improvements" category were ideas for enhancement requests for the software tool. I was informed that the VAR instructed staff to convert everything that didn't go well into a suggestion for a future general release of the software or a request for a custom enhancement of the software.
None of the work from any of the sprints was released.
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company continues with Part 4: The Options.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Author Scott M. Graffius to Speak at Los Angeles Chapter of Project Management Institute
22 March 2019
Agile Workflows
An updated version of the story is available here.
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions and author of Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions, will present "Getting (More) Benefits from Agile" at the Los Angeles chapter of the Project Management Institute. He will deliver practical information including top factors from successful Scrum implementations—based on his first-hand experience and 116 sources—which attendees can leverage to gain (more) benefits from agile. This will be Scott's second talk at the chapter. The session will be held in Santa Clarita, California on June 2, 2020. In early 2020, additional information including the time and venue for the talk will be shown at http://scottgraffius.com/publicspeaker.html.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, CSP, CSM, CSPO, PMP, ITIL, LSSGB is a project management expert, consultant, international speaker, and award-winning author.
Scott is the CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions, a professional services firm, where he partners with client companies to help them achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. The consultancy provides project, program, portfolio, and PMO management services inclusive of agile, traditional, and hybrid development and delivery frameworks. Business results include improved responsiveness to business needs, faster delivery and time-to-market, upgraded on-budget performance, higher customer and stakeholder satisfaction, and greater competitive advantage.
A fantastic agile transformation experience and result with a client in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott’s book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. The publication has garnered 17 first place awards. The credit is shared with Chris Hare and Colin Giffen, the technical editors on the book. Scott and Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions have been featured in Yahoo Finance, the Dallas Business Journal, BookLife by Publisher’s Weekly, Innovation Management, and additional media outlets. A trailer, high-resolution images, reviews, a detailed list of awards and more are available in the digital media kit.
Scott is a former vice president of project management with a publicly traded provider of diverse consumer products and services over the Internet. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects and programs in public and private organizations with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology products and services, retail, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. He has experience with consumer, business, reseller, government, and international markets.
He holds six professional certifications: Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Project Management Professional (PMP), Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (LSSGB), and IT Service Management Foundation (ITIL). He is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Within the IEEE, Graffius is a member of the Computer Society, the Consumer Electronics Society, the Broadcast Technology Society, the Internet of Things Community, and the Consultants Network.
Scott regularly speaks at conferences and other events in the United States and internationally where he delights audiences with presentations on agile, traditional, and hybrid project, program, portfolio, and PMO management. He integrates and includes professional standards, best practices, and his first-hand experience with successful implementations. Scott uses everyday language and vibrant visuals to make complex topics clear and understandable, and he provides audiences with practical information they can use. His upcoming and past appearances are listed here.
Additional information is available at http://Exceptional-PMO.com/who_we_are/bio.
About the Los Angeles Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI-LA)
The Los Angeles chapter (PMI-LA) was chartered by the Project Management Institute in 1974. The chapter's vision is "PMI-LA will be recognized as a premier PMI chapter for the advancement of project management and a benchmark for other PMI chapters." Its mission is “To provide opportunities for individual growth in project management and increase corporate awareness of the project management profession.” For more on the PMI-LA, visit https://pmi-la.org. The chapter's hashtag is #PMILA.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 4
26 March 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the fourth installment of the eight-part story. If you haven't already read the earlier parts, you can find them here:
Part 4: The Options
After gaining a broader and deeper understanding of the organization including their Scrum implementation, I met with the executive vice president (EVP) and we discussed next steps. I presented three options:
- No change,
- Revert to the earlier waterfall-only model, or
- "We can try different things" (aligned with the value of openness) with the objective of improving their agile implementation and achieving their goals.
I said, "we can try different things" because while I believed that changes would likely result in improvements, success could not be guaranteed. I also said, "we can try different things" because any meaningful change would require the cooperation and collaboration of many people. The EVP decided on the third option: trying different things.
The doing of "different things" started with training. I first met with the EVP. I then met with the Scrum Master in several one-on-one meetings. And since he was committed to education and improvement, he later on completed the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) training and certification. The Product Owner was unable to attend the office in person for one-on-one training, but we communicated by phone and Skype. The EVP soon decided that the Product Owner needed to be co-located with the Scrum Team. He found a new Product Owner within the organization. I met with the new Product Owner in multiple one-on-one sessions. And—similar to what occurred with the Scrum Master—since the new Product Owner was committed to education and improvement, he subsequently completed the Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training and certification. I delivered training to the Development Team as a group. It included an overview and more in-depth coverage of certain topics such as pair programming and technical debt. Later on, some Development Team members completed the Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) training and certification. Stakeholder training follows next.
I delivered a one-hour overview of Scrum to the executive stakeholders in a group session. The attendees asked questions and made comments throughout the meeting. One stakeholder suggested that we do what the American Management Association says is best for Scrum. Then other attendees mentioned additional potential sources for information on agile. I explained that different organizations may have their own perspective on what works well for agile/Scrum, and that one way to go (I mentioned this in part to continue their engagement, involvement, and buy-in) is to look to the Scrum Alliance, a leading authority on the subject, but also see if others have ideas that are aligned with the authority and also fit the desired future state of the organization. I committed to doing the research and the stakeholders thanked me in advance.
I already had a library of 76 items on agile/Scrum—consisting of material from the Scrum Alliance, Project Management Institute, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Gartner, KPMG, Harvard Business Review, IEEE, MIT, Forbes, and many others. I expanded it to include sources mentioned by stakeholders during the training session and I diligently reviewed all of the content. The diverse sources identified several values and practices as being central in successful Scrum implementations, and such factors were typically consistent with guidelines from the Scrum Alliance. I then met with each of the stakeholders individually and presented them with a summary of information from the Scrum Alliance and others.
I facilitated a follow-up group meeting with the executive stakeholders. Information from the one-hour training and the diverse sources was summarized. The stakeholders concluded that the central problem with the then-current implementation was that people were not following good practices. They then discussed, voted, and identified what they viewed as the high-level top 10 success factors for a Scrum implementation at the organization based on the previously presented information. In no particular order, the top 10 items were:
- Support from management;
- Each member of the Scrum Team (Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team) is 100% allocated to the project;
- There is an agile coach, agile Project Management Office or agile Center of Excellence;
- Satisfaction is a crucial metric;
- The Scrum Team has no more than 11 people;
- The Scrum Team is co-located;
- There are consistent practices and processes;
- There is a digital wallboard or other information radiator;
- There are frequent and high-quality interactions; and
- There is continuous improvement/inspect and adapt.
Some of the items overlap/are not mutually exclusive, and the items are not exhaustive. I thanked the executive stakeholders for their support, and I told them that the 10 factors are built into the go-forward plan. The stakeholders expressed their appreciation.
The EVP and I conducted a mini-retrospective on the training sessions. The EVP was enthusiastic about what we've done so far, and he said that morale had improved. He authorized company-paid CSM, CSPO, and CSD trainings and certifications for staff (mentioned earlier). The EVP said we could advance to the next stage: piloting changes. I asked if he was open to terminating the use of the software tool introduced by the value-added reseller (VAR). He initially said that so much time and money had been invested in it that it would be hard to justify doing so. I said it differently: "We can try different things" could mean putting the software tool on vacation for a period. He agreed. We moved to the pilot—which involved doing many things differently. Examples follow.
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company continues with Part 5: The Pilot — Vision, Roadmap and Release Plan, and Product Backlog.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 5
31 March 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the fifth installment of the eight-part story. If you haven't already read the earlier parts, you can find them here:
Part 5: The Pilot – Vision, Roadmap and Release Plan, and Product Backlog
We advanced to the pilot—which included doing many things differently. Examples follow.
The Product Owner and I discussed techniques on developing a product vision statement. He opted to use the template attributed to Geoffrey Moore. The Product Owner created a draft of the vision and sent it with a request for feedback to the stakeholders. After receiving feedback, the Product Owner revised and finalized the product vision. He wrote the statement on oversize paper and posted it in a prominent location where the Scrum Team (Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team) and stakeholders could easily see it.
The Product Owner and I then discussed techniques on creating and maintaining a product roadmap/release plan. He opted for a simple table with four rows and four columns. The rows included:
- Name (the title of the product or major release),
- Goal (the reason for creating it),
- Features (a high-level list of features), and
- Estimated number of sprints.
For the columns, there was one for each quarter of the year. Similar to what was done with the product vision, the Product Owner sent the plan with a request for feedback to the stakeholders. After receiving feedback, the Product Owner revised and the plan, wrote it on oversize paper, and posted it next to the product vision statement.
Aspects of team formation were covered already. The new Scrum team totaled 11 people. All were co-located and 100% allocated to the project.
The Product Owner and I discussed techniques on developing and maintaining the product backlog. He opted to employ a simple table format with six columns:
- ID#,
- User story/description,
- Category (he decided on four types: feature, bug, technical debt, and other),
- Story point estimate for complexity,
- Priority based on business value, and
- Status.
To help with user stories, the Product Owner often referenced the INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable) model developed by Bill Wake. For priority, the Product Owner initially used the MoSCoW method (Must have, Should have, Could have, or Won't have). Later, the Product Owner found the business value/risk method (where each item is rated as high or low in two dimensions—business value and risk, ...) to be the most beneficial, and the Product Owner continues to use that approach today. In a session facilitated by the Scrum Master, the Product Owner presented the user stories to the Development Team, and participants provided story points (using physical cards for the exercise) for estimates of complexity of each item. Later, the team tried t-shirt sizing (S, M, L, and XL designations) for estimates of complexity, but they decided to return to story points.
Previously, sprints were four weeks in length. Now the team was using the shorter duration of two weeks. A key benefit was that the Scrum value of focus was improved.
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company continues with Part 6: The Pilot — Sprint Planning and Sprint Execution.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 6
05 April 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the sixth installment of the eight-part story. If you haven't already read the earlier parts, you can find them here:
- Part 1: The Call;
- Part 2: The Goals;
- Part 3: The Environment;
- Part 4: The Options; and
- Part 5: The Pilot – Vision, Roadmap and Release Plan, and Product Backlog.
Part 6: The Pilot – Sprint Planning and Sprint Execution
The Product Owner, Scrum Master and I discussed sprint planning techniques. The Scrum Master decided that the meeting event would be handled via two separate sessions—part 1 (what will be committed to for the upcoming sprint) and part 2 (how to accomplish the work identified in part 1).
For sprint planning part 1, the timebox (not to exceed duration) for the meeting was calculated as:
- 2
- multiplied by the number of weeks in the upcoming sprint (2 in this case),
- which equaled 4 hours for the event.
The Scrum Master made the following information visible during the event: start and end dates for the sprint, (after a sprint was completed) the results of the last sprint review event, and (after a sprint was completed) the results from the last sprint retrospective event. The Product Owner reminded the Development Team about the product vision statement, and the Product Owner shared the sprint goal (such as "implement shopping cart functionality ..."). The Development Team determined their capacity in work hours for the upcoming sprint. It was calculated as:
- the number of people in the Development Team
- multiplied by the number of project productive hours (which excluded time outside the sprint such as company meetings, trainings, vacation time, etc.) per workday
- multiplied by number of workdays in the sprint.
(Estimation via story points, and prioritization by the Product Owner were already taken care of.)
For each item in the product backlog, participants discussed the user stories/requirements including acceptance criteria, assumptions, dependencies, risks, and anything else requiring a conversation to get a good understanding of the item. The Development Team then committed to the entries which they thought could be completed in the upcoming sprint. The technique they employed involved asking "Can we do this first item in the product backlog?" If the answer was yes, they selected it and proceeded to the next item and continued until the team believed that no more work could be done in the sprint. After the Development Team had worked together and had data on actual velocity (the number of story points completed in a sprint), they also considered that historical metric—comparing it with story points for items in the sprint. The Product Owner updated the product backlog, identifying the items committed by the Development Team to be done for the upcoming sprint.
For sprint planning part 2, the timebox for the meeting was calculated as:
- 2
- multiplied by the number of weeks in the upcoming sprint (2 in this case),
- which equaled 4 hours for the event.
The Scrum team created the sprint backlog. It had the following columns:
- ID#,
- Description,
- Story points,
- Task information (meetings, designs, coding, code review, testing, etc.),
- Estimation in hours (they adopted the practice that if effort is greater than eight hours, split the task into smaller ones),
- Owner (where members of the Development Team self-assign tasks),
- Status, and
- Hours of work remaining.
During the meeting, the Scrum team compared the total estimated work hours for the sprint with the Development Team’s capacity (mentioned under the part 1 meeting) for the sprint. If the Development Team believed that the sprint backlog contained too much work to be done during the sprint, they collaborated with the Product Owner to remove one or more items. If the Development Team believed they could handle more work during the sprint, they worked with the Product Owner to move one or more of the high priority items from the product backlog to the sprint backlog.
The Product Owner, Scrum Master and I discussed sprint execution. Select examples of what was decided and done are highlighted next.
The Development Team set up a task board (also known as a Scrum board) to reflect the work in the current iteration. They went with a simple format. The board depicted work in rows and columns where rows included work items, and columns reflected status (To Do, Doing, and Done). Work was addressed from top (highest priority) to bottom, and work migrated from left to right on the task board as it progressed. The task board is also covered in the daily Scrum meeting.
The Scrum Master decided to use a sprint burndown chart to track and communicate progress during the sprint. He set it up and updated it each workday, usually immediately after the daily Scrum meeting.
The Scrum Master created an impediment backlog to capture things preventing the team from progressing or improving. This backlog was updated daily, typically immediately after the daily Scrum meeting.
At the daily Scrum meeting event, the Development Team shared status, plans, and any impediments. Before this pilot with changes, the team was not conducting the daily Scrum (or updating the task board, burndown chart, and impediments backlog) consistently. Under the pilot (and subsequently), the Development Team met for up to 15 minutes (timebox) each workday, and it was conducted at the same time (10:00 a.m.) each day. At this daily stand-up session, the Development Team and the Scrum Master met where the task board, sprint burndown chart, and impediment backlog were posted. Each Development Team member described what he/she worked on since the last Scrum meeting, and he/she updated the task board. Next, the same Development Team member explained what he/she would work on that day, and he/she updated the task board. Lastly, the same Development Team member reported any impediments. (The Scrum Master recorded any issues in the impediments backlog. If a discussion was required, it took place immediately after the daily Scrum. The Scrum Master helped resolve impediments.) The steps were repeated for other members of the Development Team.
The Scrum Team built an increment of functionality during every sprint, and the increment was potentially shippable because the Product Owner might decide for it to be implemented at the end of the sprint. Said differently, potentially shippable is defined by a state of confidence or readiness, and shipping is a business decision. Commencing with the pilot, the organization started releasing products as often as every sprint (two weeks).
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company continues with Part 7: The Pilot — Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 7
11 April 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the seventh installment of the eight-part story. If you haven't already read the earlier parts, you can find them here:
- Part 1: The Call;
- Part 2: The Goals;
- Part 3: The Environment;
- Part 4: The Options;
- Part 5: The Pilot – Vision, Roadmap and Release Plan, and Product Backlog; and
- Part 6: The Pilot – Sprint Planning and Sprint Execution.
Part 7: The Pilot – Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective
The Scrum team—Product Owner, Scrum Master, and the Development Team—and I discussed techniques for the sprint review. The event is sometimes referred to as the sprint demo. The timebox (not to exceed duration) in hours for the meeting was calculated as:
- 1
- multiplied by the number of weeks in the upcoming sprint (2 in this case),
- which equaled 2 hours for the event.
Participants included the Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development Team, and stakeholders. All of the stakeholders (the executives mentioned in earlier parts of the story) were invited to and attended the sprint review. At the session, the Product Owner welcomed attendees and communicated the agenda. He pointed out the sprint goal, which was displayed on the wall in the meeting room. Next, the Development Team listed the work that was committed to the sprint. They then listed the work that was completed and the work that was not completed. For each completed story/feature, the Development Team demonstrated the "done" working functionality and answered questions. Stakeholders were invited to interact with the "done" working functionality and they did so. Then the entire group reviewed the product backlog and collaborated on what to do next. The Product Owner incorporated feedback into the Product Backlog. It involved adding new items to the backlog and/or re-prioritizing existing items. After the sprint review, the Scrum Master incorporated any feedback related to problems into the impediments backlog.
The Scrum Master and I discussed techniques for the sprint retrospective event. The timebox in hours for the meeting was calculated as:
- 0.75
- multiplied by the number of weeks in the upcoming sprint (2 in this case),
- which equaled 1.50 hours for the event.
At the sprint retrospective, the Development Team identified what went well, what didn't go well, and improvements to be implemented in the upcoming sprint—an example of inspection and adaptation. For improvements to be implemented, each member of the Development Team wrote their top one, two or three suggestions on sticky notes. Each idea got its own sticky note. Then the Development Team grouped the sticky notes into categories/themes, and they discussed the items and voted to determine the top one (initially limited to one, later it was raised to two) for adaptation and improvement. The Development Team committed to the change and the Scrum Master recorded the information.
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company concludes with Part 8: The Success.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 8
15 April 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the final installment of the eight-part story. If you haven't already read the earlier parts, you can find them here:
- Part 1: The Call;
- Part 2: The Goals;
- Part 3: The Environment;
- Part 4: The Options;
- Part 5: The Pilot – Vision, Roadmap and Release Plan, and Product Backlog;
- Part 6: The Pilot – Sprint Planning and Sprint Execution; and
- Part 7: The Pilot – Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective.
Part 8: The Success
By adopting an agile mindset and providing improved engagement, collaboration, transparency, and adaptability via Scrum's values, roles, events, and artifacts, the results were excellent. After one sprint, satisfaction ratings for the Development Team and stakeholders were higher than the target. After three sprints, the output of the Scrum Team became consistent and predictable, satisfaction increased even further, and all of the seven goals mentioned earlier were achieved. Here's an overview:
🎯 Goal 1
- Source: This goal was identified by the EVP (executive vice president)
- Desired outcome: Develop and deliver products and services faster than 6-12 months
- Result: The goal was achieved (with the agile transformation, delivery occurred as often as every two weeks)
🎯 Goal 2
- Source: This goal was identified by the EVP
- Desired outcome: Improve the satisfaction of the Scrum Team
- Result: The goal was achieved
🎯 Goal 3
- Source: This goal was identified by the EVP
- Desired outcome: Improve the satisfaction of the stakeholders
- Result: The goal was achieved
🎯 Goal 4
- Source: This goal was identified by the Scrum Team (Scrum Master, Product Owner, and the Development Team)
- Desired outcome: Meet or exceed the expectations of management
- Result: The goal was achieved
🎯 Goal 5
- Source: This goal was identified by the Scrum Team
- Desired outcome: Deliver valuable products/services
- Result: The goal was achieved
🎯 Goal 6
- Source: This goal was identified by the stakeholders
- Desired outcome: For stakeholders or their representatives to be more involved in requirements
- Result: The goal was achieved
🎯 Goal 7
- Source: This goal was identified by the stakeholders
- Desired outcome: Get useable products delivered more frequently than 6-12 months
- Result: The goal was achieved (with the agile transformation, delivery occurred as often as every two weeks)
The EVP, Scrum Team, and stakeholders declared the pilot a success and they made this implementation of Scrum the preferred approach for the development and delivery of products and services going forward.
In addition to achieving the goals summarized above, the agile transformation also supported the organization's efforts to innovate and drive their competitive advantage. It became more successful. As the business grew, so has the number of Scrum teams. Originally numbering one, the division presently has six Scrum teams.
This concludes The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company. The agile transformation experience was the inspiration for Scott M. Graffius’ book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. The publication helps technical and non-technical teams develop and deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, continuous improvement, and more. It has garnered 17 first place awards and credit is shared with Chris Hare and Colin Giffen, the technical editors on the publication. Scott and Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions have been featured in Yahoo Finance, the Boston Herald, NBC WRAL, the Dallas Business Journal, the PM World Journal, Learning Solutions, Innovation Management, and additional media publications. A trailer, high-resolution images, reviews, and a detailed list of awards are in the digital media kit.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Scott M. Graffius Named Author of the Week by AUTHORSWEEK for His New Title, Agile Transformation
08 May 2019
Agile Workflows
AUTHORSWEEK named Scott M. Graffius as Author of the Week for his new title, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change. This is Scott's second book. His first title, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions, garnered 17 first place awards.
About the Author
Scott M. Graffius is a project management expert, consultant, speaker, and author. He is CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, a professional services firm, where he partners with client companies to help them achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects in public and private companies with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. Scott's first book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions (ISBN-13: 9781533370242), garnered 17 first place awards from national and international competitions. Scott and Agile Scrum have been featured in Yahoo Finance, the Boston Herald, Learning Solutions, Informa, Innovation Management, and additional media publications. He regularly speaks at conferences and other events around the world. For additional information on Scott, see his bio.
About the Book
🏆 Award-winning, quick-read #agile #projectmanagement 📖 #book ‘Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change’ is available 🌐 worldwide: https://t.co/GDuxvhDgyO. pic.twitter.com/KgwoC9P0bX
— Agile Transformation Book (@AgileTransform) February 2, 2022
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits. Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change (ISBN-13: 978-1072447962) provides a revealing behind-the-scenes story about an actual successful agile implementation at a global entertainment company.
The award-winning book — a quick (60-90 minute) read — is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle formats in the United States and around the world. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About AUTHORSWEEK
AUTHORSWEEK provides a weekly round-up of the latest book releases and author platform programs. For additional information, visit their website at AUTHORSWEEK.COM.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
"Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions" Included in List of Books in “A Scrum Practitioner’s Guide to Software Development – What’s on Your Bookshelf?”
09 May 2019
Agile Workflows
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is included in a list of books in “A Scrum Practitioner’s Guide to Software Development – What’s on Your Bookshelf?” by Michael Tomlin. Thank you!
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Author Scott M. Graffius to Speak at a Virtual Event of the Los Angeles Chapter of Project Management Institute
06 May 2020
Agile Workflows
An earlier version of this story appeared on March 22, 2019. This version includes the update that Scott's talk will be a virtual event.
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions and author of Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change, will present "Getting (More) Benefits from Agile" at a virtual event of the Los Angeles chapter of the Project Management Institute. He will deliver practical information including top factors from successful Scrum implementations—based on his first-hand experience and 116 sources—which attendees can leverage to gain (more) benefits from agile.
⁃ Location: Virtual event
⁃ Date: Tuesday, June 2, 2020
⁃ Time: 5:30-7:15 p.m. Pacific Time
For more information and to register for the virtual event, visit bit.ly/agile-virtual.
This will be Scott's second talk at the chapter.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius is a technology leader, project management expert, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker. His content has been used by corporations, governments, and universities.
Scott is a Principal Consultant and the CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, a professional services firm, where he helps clients strengthen their project management capabilities and realize their strategic objectives and business initiatives. The consultancy provides advisory, training, and facilitative consulting services related to governance and project, program, portfolio, and PMO management. The firm’s expertise spans agile, traditional waterfall, and hybrid approaches. While every engagement is unique, outcomes typically include getting more projects done, faster delivery time, improved on-budget performance, improved customer and stakeholder satisfaction, and more. Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ confidently backs its services with a Delighted Client Guarantee™.
A fantastic agile transformation experience and result with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott’s first book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions (ISBN-13: 9781533370242). It helps technical and non-technical teams develop and deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement—which supports innovation and drives competitive advantage. The book has garnered 17 first place awards from national and international competitions. Scott and Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions have been featured in Yahoo Finance, the Boston Herald, NBC WRAL, Informa, Innovation Management, the Dallas Business Journal, Computer Weekly, the PM World Journal, BookLife by Publisher’s Weekly, NHD Podcast, Learning Solutions, Dr. Harold Kerzner’s Innovation Project Management, and additional media outlets and publications. The trailer, high-resolution images, reviews, a list of awards, and more are available in the digital media kit.
His second title, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change (ISBN-13: 9781072447962), was named one of the best Scrum books of all time by BookAuthority.
Scott's content has been used by corporations, governments, and universities—including Cisco, RSA, Ford, LITE-ON Technology Corporation, Liberty Mutual Group, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, James Madison University, Santa Clara University, Brigham Young University, Texas A&M University, The Open University, Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, and others.
Scott is a former vice president of project management with a publicly traded provider of diverse consumer products and services over the Internet. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects and programs in public and private organizations with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology products and services, retail, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. He has experience with consumer, business, reseller, government, and international markets, as well as experience spanning 20 countries.
Scott has a bachelor's degree in Psychology with a focus in Human Factors. He holds seven professional certifications: Certified Scrum Professional - ScrumMaster (CSP-SM), Certified Scrum Professional - Product Owner (CSP-PO), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Project Management Professional (PMP), Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (LSSGB), and IT Service Management Foundation (ITIL). He is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
He has been actively involved with the Project Management Institute (PMI) in the development of professional standards. He was a member of the team which produced the Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures—Second Edition. Scott was a contributor and reviewer of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge—Sixth Edition, The Standard for Program Management—Fourth Edition, and The Practice Standard for Project Estimating—Second Edition. He was also a subject matter expert reviewer of content for the PMI EMEA Congress 2019, and he served as a member of the review team for the Scrum Alliance’s Global Scrum Gathering—New York City 2020.
Scott regularly speaks at conferences and other events around the globe where he delights audiences with presentations on agile, traditional, and hybrid project, program, portfolio, and PMO management. He integrates content on professional standards, best practices, and his first-hand experience with successful implementations. Scott uses everyday language and vibrant custom visuals to make complex topics clear and understandable, and he provides audiences with practical information they can use. Appearances and testimonials are listed at the public speaker section of his website.
Scott resides in Los Angeles, California.
About the Los Angeles Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI-LA)
The Los Angeles chapter (PMI-LA) was chartered by the Project Management Institute in 1974. The chapter's vision is "PMI-LA will be recognized as a premier PMI chapter for the advancement of project management and a benchmark for other PMI chapters." Its mission is “To provide opportunities for individual growth in project management and increase corporate awareness of the project management profession.” For more on the PMI-LA, visit https://pmi-la.org. The chapter's hashtag is #PMILA.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2020 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Gartner Featured Content from Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
19 May 2020
Agile Workflows
The photo was taken during Gartner VP Cathleen Blanton’s session, IT Governance in Government: Secret Weapon or Most Dreaded Chore?, at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Orlando, Florida on October 20, 2019.
The quote on metrics ("If you don’t collect any metrics, you’re flying blind. If you collect and focus on too many, they may be obstructing your field of view.") is from Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions ― Scott M. Graffius, Author; Chris Hare and Colin Giffen, Technical Editors.
The whole context of the presentation was on governance and decision-making. Cathleen conveyed that the idea for the slide pictured was that if you measure something that matters, you can use those metrics to drive better behavior through visibility and focus.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, PMP, ITIL, LSSGB is a project management expert, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker. He is a Principal Consultant and the CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, a professional services firm, where he helps clients strengthen their project management capabilities and realize their strategic objectives and business initiatives. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects and programs in public and private companies with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. Scott is the author of two award-winning books on agile project management, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions (ISBN-13: 978-1533370242) and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change (ISBN-13: 978-1072447962). Scott's content has been used by businesses, governments, and universities—including Gartner, Cisco, RSA, Ford, LITE-ON Technology Corporation, Liberty Mutual Group, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, James Madison University, Santa Clara University, Brigham Young University, Texas A&M University, The Open University, Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, and others. He regularly speaks at in-person and virtual online conferences and other events around the world. Additional information is available in Scott’s full bio at https://www.exceptional-pmo.com/who_we_are/bio.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Cathleen Blanton
Cathleen Blanton, Vice President at Gartner, is a member of their Public Sector Government team. She focuses on U.S. Federal agencies, covering strategic planning, governance, and ensuring IT enables businesses and mission value. Cathleen specializes in helping CIOs position themselves to partner with executive counterparts on the issues that help their organizations achieve outcomes in both efficiency and mission effectiveness. She takes an approach that is both pragmatic and tailored to organizations’ culture. For more information, visit https://www.gartner.com.
About Gartner IT Symposium￨Xpo
Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo is billed as “the world's most important gathering of CIOs and IT executives.” The conference enables more than 9,000 attendees to shape the future of IT and business strategies. For details, visit https://www.gartner.com/en/conferences/na/symposium-us.
About Gartner
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading research and advisory company and a member of the S&P 500. They equip business leaders with indispensable insights, advice and tools to achieve their mission-critical priorities today and build the successful organizations of tomorrow. To learn more, visit https://www.gartner.com.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2020 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Agile Project Management Influencer Scott M. Graffius to Speak at CIE Chaper of Project Management Institute
07 November 2020
Agile Workflows
Agile project management expert, author, and influencer Scott M. Graffius will present “10 Ways to Score and Prioritize Project Proposals Based on Multiple Factors, Including Strategic Alignment” at a virtual event of the California Inland Empire Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMICIE). The session will occur on Tuesday, February 9, 2021. It will be Scott's third talk at the PMICIE. The event is open to everyone (PMICIE membership is not required). For more information and to register, visit here.
Description of Talk
How does your organization assess proposals for new projects? Is there a well-defined scoring and prioritization process — based on alignment with the business’ strategic objectives and other factors — to quickly and easily identify the objective value of each proposal (including how important it is relative to other initiatives)? If the answer is “no,” keep reading. If the answer is “yes,” you are likely to find practical information and examples in this talk to adapt and adopt to improve the process at your organization.
How You Will Benefit (Key Learning Objectives)
This talk will help you develop and enhance the contributions you make to your organization by being able to:
- Understand the benefits of scoring and prioritizing project proposals based on strategic alignment and other factors.
- Identify selection and prioritization criteria appropriate for your unique organization, leveraging the flexible framework and some or all of the 10 factors presented during the talk.
- Put the practical, actionable information presented to use. During the session, we will run an example project proposal through the process, step-by-step. You will receive a summary “cheat sheet” that you can reference as a guide to help implement or improve this process at your organization.
Audience
This session is designed to be of value to project, program, and portfolio managers; project, program, and portfolio management office staff; Center of Excellence staff; Scrum Masters, Product Owners, agile coaches, and other agile practitioners and staff; executives making decisions about organization strategy; functional managers; researchers; customers; and additional stakeholders.
References
The talk draws on the speaker’s first-hand experience, with his guidance supported by related standards, best practices, and recommendations from the Project Management Institute, IEEE, MIT, Harvard Business Review, Scrum Alliance, Deloitte, and others.
Speaker Bio
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management consultant, practitioner, award-winning author, and keynote speaker. Content from his books, speaking engagements, and more has been used by businesses, governments, and universities, including: Gartner, Cisco, Ford, Qantas, Atlassian, Bayer, the United States Department of Energy, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, Texas A&M, and others. Thinkers360 named Scott a Top 20 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Agile. His full-length bio is available at: https://bit.ly/bio-smg.
About the Project Management Institute California Inland Empire (PMICIE) Chapter
The PMICIE—chartered by the Project Management Institute in 2002—is based in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Committed to the advancement of the project management profession, the Chapter provides its members with networking, training, and professional development opportunities. Its website is https://pmicie.org.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2020 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Agile Project Management Expert Scott M. Graffius to Speak on Team Leadership at Netherlands Chapter of Project Management Institute
04 January 2021
Agile Workflows
Agile project management expert, author, and influencer Scott M. Graffius will present "Navigate the Phases of Team Development with Speed and Agility" at a virtual event of the Netherlands Chapter of the Project Management Institute on Thursday, January 21, 2021. For more information and to register for the event, visit https://pmi-nl.nl/calendar?eventId=6953.
Scott's speaker reel video, and details on his speaking engagements, are available here.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management consultant, practitioner, award-winning author, and international speaker. Content from his books, speaking engagements, and more has been used by businesses, governments, and universities, including: Gartner, Oracle, Cisco, Ford, Qantas, Atlassian, Bayer, the National Academy of Sciences, the United States Department of Energy, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, Texas A&M, and others. Thinkers360 named Scott a Top 20 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Agile. His full-length bio is available at: https://bit.ly/bio-smg.
Follow @scottgraffius
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About the Netherlands Chapter of the Project Management Institute
The Netherlands Chapter of the Project Management Institute endeavors to deliver maximum value to its members and other stakeholders by providing an environment — inclusive of activities and events — supporting the development, certification, and networking of current and aspiring project, program, and portfolio management professionals. To learn more, visit the Chapter's website at https://pmi-nl.nl.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2021 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Agile Author and Influencer Scott M. Graffius to Speak at Scottish Summit 2021 Conference
30 November 2020
Agile Workflows
🔥 Update: The Scottish Summit 2021 tech conference recorded sessions and made the videos available to the public. The video for Scott's session is included at the end of this post.
Scott M. Graffius — agile influencer and author of two award-winning books, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change — will present "Are You Realizing All the Benefits from Agile?" at Scottish Summit 2021. The tech conference is normally conducted as an in-person gathering at the University of Strathclyde Technology and Innovation Centre in Glasgow, UK. In 2021, the event will be virtual.
- Location: Virtual
- Date: Saturday, February 27, 2021
For more information and to register for the conference, visit https://scottishsummit.com.
Scott's speaker reel video, and details on his speaking engagements, are available here.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management consultant, practitioner, award-winning author, and international speaker. Content from his books, speaking engagements, and more has been used by businesses, governments, and universities, including: Gartner, Oracle, Cisco, Ford, Qantas, Atlassian, Bayer, the National Academy of Sciences, the United States Department of Energy, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, Texas A&M, and others. Thinkers360 named Scott a Top 20 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Agile. His full-length bio is available here.
Follow @scottgraffius
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle in the United States and around the world. Some links by country follow.
🇦🇺 Australia
🇦🇹 Austria
🇧🇷 Brazil
🇨🇦 Canada
🇨🇿 Czech Republic
🇩🇰 Denmark
🇫🇮 Finland
🇫🇷 France
🇩🇪 Germany
🇬🇷 Greece
🇮🇳 India
🇮🇪 Ireland
🇯🇵 Japan
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
🇲🇽 Mexico
🇳🇱 Netherlands
🇳🇿 New Zealand
🇪🇸 Spain
🇸🇪 Sweden
🇨🇭 Switzerland
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
🇺🇸 United States
🌏 More countries
About Scottish Summit 2021
Scottish Summit is a diverse and inclusive tech conference that features a broad range of topics presented by the best speakers. It provides attendees with an excellent experience in a fun, relaxed, and friendly environment. Normally conducted as an in-person gathering at the University of Strathclyde Technology and Innovation Centre in Glasgow, UK, the event will be virtual in 2021. To learn more, visit https://scottishsummit.com.
Update on March 5, 2021
If you missed the event, recordings of sessions are now available on YouTube. Scott's talk is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydwIehQdLKU and the video is also shown below.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2020 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Scott M. Graffius to Speak at Microsoft Conference
01 December 2020
Agile Workflows
Scott M. Graffius — agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author (Agile Scrum and Agile Transformation), and thought leader — will present "Want Great IT? It Takes a Great Team!" at the M365 Saturday Coimbatore 2020 Conference. The virtual event will bring together IT professionals involved or interested in Microsoft Collaboration and Cloud technologies on Saturday, December 19, 2020. For more information and to register for the conference, visit spsevents.org/event/m365coimbatore2020.
Attendees of Scott's session may be eligible to receive continuing education unit (CEU) credit, equivalent to 0.75 hour. For reporting with the Project Management Institute (PMI), it’s 0.75 professional development unit (PDU), under the Leadership category. For reporting with the Scrum Alliance, it’s 0.75 Scrum educational unit (SEU), under either the Learning category or the Events category. For reporting with other organizations, refer to their respective instructions.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management consultant, practitioner, award-winning author, and keynote speaker. Content from his books, speaking engagements, and more has been used by businesses, governments, and universities, including: Gartner, Oracle Cisco, Ford, Qantas, Atlassian, Bayer, the National Academy of Sciences, the United States Department of Energy, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, Texas A&M, and others. Thinkers360 named Scott a Top 20 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Agile. His full-length bio is available at https://www.scottgraffius.com/bio.html.
Follow @scottgraffius
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About M365 Saturday Coimbatore 2020
M365 Saturday Coimbatore will bring together Information Technology professionals to share best practices, lessons learned, and more related to Microsoft Collaboration and Cloud technologies. The conference will be held as a virtual event on Saturday, December 19, 2020. To learn more, visit spsevents.org/event/m365coimbatore2020.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2020 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Agile Project Management Author Scott M. Graffius to Speak on Team Development at PMI Monterey Bay Chapter
19 March 2021
Agile Workflows
Agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author (Agile Scrum and Agile Transformation), and international speaker Scott M. Graffius will present "Navigate the Phases of Team Development with Speed and Agility" at a virtual event of the Monterey Bay Chapter of the Project Management Institute on April 15, 2021. For more information and to register for the event, visit https://www.meetup.com/PMI-MontereyBay/events/277035774.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, SFE, ITIL, LSSGB has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of business value in aggregate for the organizations he has served. He is an agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker. His expertise spans project, program, portfolio, and PMO leadership inclusive of agile, traditional, and hybrid approaches. Content from Scott's books, workshops, speaking engagements, and more have been featured and used by businesses, governments, and universities including Gartner, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Ford, Qantas, Atlassian, Bayer, the National Academy of Sciences, the United States Department of Energy, the United States Army, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, Texas A&M University, Penn State, Virginia Tech, University of Waterloo, Loughborough University London, and others. Thinkers360 named Scott a global top thought leader and influencer in three domains: Agile, Digital Transformation, and GovTech. His full-length bio is available at https://AgileScrumGuide.com.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About the Monterey Bay Chapter of the Project Management Institute
Chartered by the Project Management Institute in 2004, the Monterey Bay Chapter serves the Southwest North America region—more specifically, Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito Counties in California. The chapter is committed to advancing the project management profession by sharing knowledge and providing training and networking activities to its members and stakeholders. To learn more, visit the PMI Monterey Bay Chapter's website at https://pmi-mbay.org.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2021 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Agile Project Management Expert and Author Scott M. Graffius to Speak at Alaska Chapter of the Project Management Institute
20 January 2021
Agile Workflows
Scott M. Graffius — agile project management expert and award-winning author (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change) — will present "Navigate the Phases of Team Development with Speed and Agility" at an online event of the Alaska Chapter of the Project Management Institute on January 27, 2021, from 6:00-7:00 p.m. Alaska Standard Time. To learn more and to register for the event, visit https://pmiak.org/index.php/component/eventbooking/january-chapter-meeting.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, ITIL, LSSGB has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of business value in aggregate for the organizations he has served. He is an agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker. His expertise spans project, program, portfolio, and PMO leadership inclusive of agile, traditional, and hybrid approaches. Content from Scott's books, speaking engagements, and more have been featured and used by businesses, governments, and universities including Gartner, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Ford, Qantas, Atlassian, Bayer, the National Academy of Sciences, the United States Department of Energy, the United States Army, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, James Madison University, Santa Clara University, Brigham Young University, Texas A&M University, Virginia Tech, and others. Thinkers360 named Scott a global top thought leader and influencer in three domains: Agile, Digital Transformation, and GovTech. His full-length bio is available at https://www.scottgraffius.com/bio.html.
Follow @scottgraffius
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About the Alaska Chapter of the Project Management Institute
The mission of the Alaska Chapter of the Project Management Institute is to provide a forum for professional project managers to promote the principles of the Project Management Institute through networking with other project managers, sharing project experiences, providing and receiving training, and supporting project managers in their certification and continuing professional development efforts. To learn more, visit the chapter's website at https://pmiak.org.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2021 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Scott M. Graffius Speaking at PMI-DVC on Project Management and Strategic Alignment
09 December 2021
Agile Workflows
Agile project management thought leader, influencer, and award-winning author Scott M. Graffius will deliver a talk on project management and strategic alignment at an event of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI-DVC). The session — “10 Ways to Score and Prioritize Project Proposals Based on Multiple Factors, Including Strategic Alignment” — will be held on January 26, 2022, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The event is complimentary and online. Register at https://pmi-dvc.org/professional-development/events-prof-dev-menu/chapter-meeting/pmi-dvc-chapter-meeting-january-26-2022.
About "10 Ways to Score and Prioritize Project Proposals Based on Multiple Factors, Including Strategic Alignment"
How does your organization assess proposals for new projects? Is there a well-defined scoring and prioritization process—based on alignment with the business’ strategic objectives and other key factors—to quickly and easily identify the objective value of each proposal? If the answer is “no,” keep reading. If the answer is “yes,” you’re still likely to find practical information and examples in this talk to adapt and adopt to improve the process at your organization.
This session will help you develop and enhance the contributions you make to your organization by being able to:
- Understand the benefits of scoring and prioritizing project proposals based on strategic alignment and other key factors.
- Identify selection and prioritization criteria appropriate for your unique organization, leveraging the flexible framework and some or all of the 10 factors presented during the talk.
- Put the practical, actionable information presented to use. During the session, we will run an example project proposal through the process, step-by-step. And you will receive a summary “cheat sheet” digital download that you can reference as a guide to help implement or improve this process at your organization.
The presentation draws on the speaker’s first-hand, real-world experience, with his guidance supported by related standards, best practices, and recommendations from the Project Management Institute, MIT, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and others.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, SFE, LSSGB, ITIL | High resolution photo available here
Follow @scottgraffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, SFE, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker. He has generated over 1.75 billion dollars of business value in aggregate for the organizations he has served. Graffius is the founder, CEO, and principal consultant at Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ and subsidiary Exceptional Agility™, based in Los Angeles, California. His expertise spans project, program, portfolio, and PMO leadership inclusive of agile, traditional, and hybrid approaches. Content from his books (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change), workshops, speaking engagements, and more have been featured and used by businesses, governments, and universities including Gartner, Microsoft, Deloitte, Oracle, Cisco, Ford, Qantas, Atlassian, Bayer, the National Academy of Sciences, the United States Department of Energy, the United States Army, Project Management Institute, the IEEE, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Tufts University, Texas A&M University, Virginia Tech, Penn State, Warsaw University of Technology, University of Waterloo, Loughborough University London, and others. Graffius has spoken at 58 conferences and other events around the world, including Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. Thinkers360 named Graffius a global top thought leader and influencer in four domains: Agile, Change Management, Digital Transformation, and GovTech.
His full bio is available at https://AgileScrumGuide.com.
Connect with Scott on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Project Management Institute
Chartered by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in 1979, the Delaware Valley Chapter (PMI-DVC) serves Greater Philadelphia, South Jersey, Delaware, and Eastern Shore Maryland. Its vision, mission, and objectives follow.
Vision
PMI-DVC is a dynamic organization of project management professionals dedicated to serving the business and educational community of the Chapter via the advancement of project management.
Mission
PMI-DVC provides a forum for project management professionals to:
- Promote the principles of the PMI through networking with project management professionals.
- Share project experiences.
- Provide and receive training.
- Support project management professionals in their certification efforts.
Objectives
PMI-DVC objectives include:
- Promoting professional project management principles and techniques with local businesses, universities, and professional associations.
- Creating and delivering an educational program that strengthens local project management professionals' skills and supports the PMI Certification Program.
- Providing world-class PMI certification and training by hiring the best instructors and by developing and delivering the best training materials.
To learn more about the Chapter, visit https://pmi-dvc.org.
About the Project Management Institute
The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world's leading professional association for a growing community of millions of project professionals and change-makers worldwide. As the leading authority on project management, the PMI empowers people to make ideas a reality. Through global advocacy, networking, collaboration, research, and education, the PMI helps prepare organizations and individuals to work smarter in a dynamic and rapidly changing world.
Building on a prominent legacy dating to 1969, the PMI is a “for-purpose” organization working in nearly every country around the world to advance careers, strengthen organizational success, and enable change-makers with new skills and ways of working to maximize their impact. The PMI provides global standards, certifications, online courses, thought leadership, tools, digital publications, communities, and more.
To learn more about the PMI, visit https://www.pmi.org/.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2021 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Highly Recommended Agile Project Management Books
22 February 2022
Agile Workflows
2022 Update
Books can be a great way to advance your agile project management development. This article highlights 11 highly recommended publications. Two of which are multi award-winning books by Scott M. Graffius.
Prices are in U.S. Dollar, current as of the date of this article. Names, marks, images, and content are the property of their respective owners. Books are presented in alphabetical order—by title.
Agile Estimating and Planning
Agile Estimating and Planning
- Author: Mike Cohn
- ISBN-10: 0131479415
- ISBN-13: 978-0131479418
- Paperback: $36.22
- Link to book on Amazon
Agile Game Development
Agile Game Development
- Author: Clinton Keith
- ISBN-10: 0136527817
- ISBN-13: 978-0136527817
- Paperback: $43.49
- Link to the book on Amazon
Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products
Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products
Author: Jim Highsmith
ISBN-10: 0321658396
ISBN-13: 978-0321658395
Paperback: $46.99
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Author: Scott M. Graffius
ISBN-10: 1533370249
ISBN-13: 978-1533370242
Paperback: $34.99
Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices
Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices
- Author: Robert C. Martin
- ISBN-10: 0135974445
- ISBN-13: 978-0135974445
- Hardcover (paperback not available at the time of this article): $71.99
- Link to the book on Amazon
Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
- Author: Scott M. Graffius
- ISBN-10: 1072447967
- ISBN-13: 978-1072447962
- Paperback: $5.95
- Link to the book on Amazon
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
- Author: Robert C. Martin
- ISBN-10: 0132350882
- ISBN-13: 978-0132350884
- Paperback: $25.33
- Link to the book on Amazon
Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects
Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects
- Author: Harold Kerzner
- ISBN-10: 1119587298
- ISBN-13: 978-1119587293
- Hardcover (paperback not available at the time of this article): $78.37
- Link to the book on Amazon
The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey To Mastery
The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey To Mastery
- Authors: David Thomas and Andrew Hunt
- ISBN-10: 0135957052
- ISBN-13: 978-0135957059
- Hardcover (paperback not available at the time of this article): $30.19
- Link to the book on Amazon
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
- Author: Martin Fowler
- ISBN-10: 0134757599
- ISBN-13: 978-0134757599
- Hardcover (paperback not available at the time of this article): $50.49
- Link to the book on Amazon
Retrospectives Antipatterns
Retrospectives Antipatterns
- Author: Corry Aino Vonge
- ISBN-10: 013682336X
- ISBN-13: 978-0136823360
- Paperback: $29.99
- Link to the book on Amazon
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
The short link for this article is: bit.ly/11-agile-books
© Copyright 2022 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Future of Agile
10 April 2023
Agile Workflows
A Brief Overview of Agile
Organizations are increasingly adopting Agile approaches — such as Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and others — to develop products and services. Some of the top reasons are:
- Flexibility: Agile approaches prioritize flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing requirements and circumstances easily. That’s advantageous in today's fast-paced business environment.
- Faster Time-to-Market: Agile approaches emphasize quick delivery of working products or services, which enables businesses to rapidly respond to market demands and gain a competitive edge.
- Customer-centric: Agile approaches focus on delivering value to customers, which helps businesses to better understand their needs and deliver products or services that meet those needs.
- Collaboration: Agile approaches encourage collaboration and communication between team members, which helps to create a more cohesive and productive team.
- Continuous improvement: Agile approaches prioritize continuous improvement, allowing teams to reflect on their performance and adjust their approach as needed to improve productivity and efficiency.
The Future of Agile
As technology advances and business environments become more complex, Agile remains a powerful approach for organizations to stay competitive and deliver value to their customers. This article explores trends shaping the future of Agile and the key factors that contribute to its success.
Scaling Agile
One of the key trends shaping the future of Agile is scaling. Many organizations are looking for ways to scale Agile across teams, departments, and even the entire organization. Doing so involves adopting frameworks like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), Disciplined Agile (DA), and others to coordinate and align multiple Agile teams to achieve common goals. Scaling Agile is essential to ensure that Agile practices are consistent across the organization, and that teams are working towards the same objectives.
Agile and DevOps
DevOps is another trend shaping the future of Agile. DevOps is a natural extension of Agile principles and values. DevOps aims to integrate development and operations teams to improve collaboration, streamline processes, and accelerate software delivery. As organizations increasingly embrace DevOps, Agile teams will need to incorporate DevOps practices into their workflow. This means that Agile teams will need to work more closely with operations teams and adopt new tools and practices to manage infrastructure and deployment.
Agile for Non-Tech Projects
Agile approaches were initially developed for software development projects. However, Agile principles and values can be applied to non-tech projects as well, such as marketing, HR, and finance. As organizations look for ways to improve their processes and adapt to change quickly, Agile will continue to gain traction in non-tech areas.
Agile with AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way businesses operate. Agile teams can leverage AI tools and techniques to improve software quality, automate testing, and optimize project management. As AI continues to evolve, Agile teams will need to adapt their processes and practices to best incorporate AI. Agile teams will need to work closely with data scientists and machine learning experts to identify opportunities to use AI in their projects.
Agile for Remote Teams
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend of remote work. Agile teams need to adapt their processes to work effectively in a remote environment. This includes adopting new collaboration tools, establishing clear communication channels, and adapting Agile events (previously referred to as ceremonies) to work in a virtual setting.
Conclusion
The future of Agile is bright. Organizations are increasingly adopting Agile approaches to the development of products and services. By embracing trends — such as Scaling Agile, Agile and DevOps, Agile for non-tech, Agile with AI, and Agile for remote teams — and advances in technology, organizations can improve their Agile implementations and competitive advantage.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, SA, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, SFE, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management practitioner, consultant, multi-award-winning author, and international keynote speaker. He is the Founder of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ and subsidiary Exceptional Agility™. He has generated over $1.9 billion of business value in aggregate for Global Fortune 500 businesses and other organizations he has served. Graffius and content from his books (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change), talks, workshops, and more have been featured and used by businesses, professional associations, governments, and universities. Examples include Microsoft, Oracle, Broadcom, Cisco, Gartner, Project Management Institute, IEEE, Qantas, National Academy of Sciences, United States Department of Energy, New Zealand Ministry of Education, Yale University, Tufts University, and others. He has delighted audiences with dynamic and engaging talks and workshops on agile, project management, and technology leadership at 84 conferences and other events across 25 countries. Visit https://ScottGraffius.com to learn more.
Connect with Scott on:
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on:
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on:
This article was first published at https://ScottGraffius.com.
The short link for this article is: https://bit.ly/asg-future
© Copyright 2023 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Award-Winning Author Scott M. Graffius on Review Team for Scrum Alliance Global Scrum Gathering – New Orleans 2024
06 November 2023
Agile Workflows
Expert agile practitioner, consultant, thinker, creator, multi-award-winning author (Agile Scrum and Agile Transformation), and international speaker Scott M. Graffius was a member of the Review Team for the Scrum Alliance Global Scrum Gathering – New Orleans 2024. Graffius and other members of the Review Team scored abstracts of proposed sessions for the conference. The resulting final program will engage attendees through high-quality learning experiences and more.
About the Scrum Alliance Global Scrum Gathering – New Orleans 2024
Scrum Alliance’s next Global Scrum Gathering heads to the Big Easy for four days of new connections, educational sessions from experienced agilists, and a little bit of New Orleans magic from May 19-22, 2024. Visit https://hub.scrumalliance.org/global-scrum-gathering-2024-nola to learn more.
About the Scrum Alliance
Founded in 2001, Scrum Alliance is the largest, most established and influential professional membership and certification organization in the Agile community. Scrum Alliance is a nonprofit association with more than 1,200,000 members worldwide. Its vision is to “Transform the World of Work” with a mission to guide and inspire individuals, leaders, and organizations with practices, principles, and values that create workplaces that are joyful, prosperous, and sustainable. For more information, visit https://www.scrumalliance.org.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, SA, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, SFE, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management practitioner, consultant, multi-award-winning author, and international keynote speaker. He is the Founder of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ and subsidiary Exceptional Agility™. He has generated over $1.9 billion of business value in aggregate for Global Fortune 500 businesses and other organizations he has served. Graffius and content from his books (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change), talks, workshops, and more have been featured and used by businesses, professional associations, governments, and universities. Examples include Microsoft, Oracle, Broadcom, Cisco, Gartner, Project Management Institute, IEEE, Qantas, National Academy of Sciences, United States Department of Energy, New Zealand Ministry of Education, Yale University, Tufts University, and others. He has delighted audiences with dynamic and engaging talks and workshops on agile, project management, and technology leadership at 87 conferences and other events across 25 countries. Visit https://ScottGraffius.com to learn more.
Connect with Scott on:
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on:
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on:
The short link for this article is: https://bit.ly/asg-games
© Copyright 2023 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
24 Highly Recommended Books on Agile and Tech: List for 2024
15 December 2023
Agile Workflows
Introduction
Whether you’re reading this article on the date of publication (with 2024 on the horizon) or are reading it sometime in the future, it's always the right time to invest in your professional development.
Step through a portal crafted from 24 acclaimed titles on Agile, Technology, and their intersection. This curated list of books can support your commitment to continuous improvement and help elevate your tradecraft.
This website is owned by Scott M. Graffius, the author of two multi-award-winning books on Agile - Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change. This article does not include Graffius’ books in order to advance objectivity and keep the spotlight on the works of other stellar authors.
Prices are in U.S. Dollar. Information was current and links were functional when this article was published. Names, marks, images, and content are the property of their respective owners.
Books are presented in alphabetical order—by title. Now, on to the list!
Main Section of Article
Agile Estimating and Planning
- Title: Agile Estimating and Planning
- Author: Mike Cohn
- ISBN-10: 0131479415
- ISBN-13: 978-0131479418
- Paperback: $45.59
Order your book today.
Agile Game Development (Second Edition)
- Title: Agile Game Development (Second Edition)
- Author: Clinton Keith
- ISBN-10: 0136527817
- ISBN-13: 978-0136527817
- Paperback: $49.59
Order your book today.
Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Second Edition)
- Title: Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Second Edition)
- Author: Jim Highsmith
- ISBN-10: 0321658396
- ISBN-13: 978-0321658395
- Paperback: $45.22
Order your book today.
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
- Title: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
- Authors: Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
- ISBN-10: 0977616649
- ISBN-13: 978-0977616640
- Paperback: $16.79
Order your book today.
Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices
- Title: Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices
- Author: Robert C. Martin
- ISBN-10: 0135974445
- ISBN-13: 978-0135974445
- Paperback: $79.32
Order your book today.
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
- Title: AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
- Authors: Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan
- ISBN-10: 0593238311
- ISBN-13: 978-0593238318
- Paperback: $20.00
Order your book today.
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
- Title: Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
- Author: Rory Sutherland
- ISBN-10: 0062388428
- ISBN-13: 978-0062388421
- Paperback: $16.71
Order your book today.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
- Title: Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
- Author: James Clear
- ISBN-10: 0735211299
- ISBN-13: 978-0735211292
- Hardcover (paperback not available at time of story): $13.79
Order your book today.
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games are Made
- Title: Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games are Made
- Author: Jason Schreier
- ISBN-10: 0062651234
- ISBN-13: 978-0062651235
- Paperback: $12.61
Order your book today.
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
- Title: Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
- Author: Robert C. Martin
- ISBN-10: 0132350882
- ISBN-13: 978-0132350884
- Paperback: $47.49
Order your book today.
Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition
- Title: Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition
- Author: Lyssa Adkins
- ISBN-10: 0321637704
- ISBN-13: 978-0321637703
- Paperback: $40.02
Order your book today.
Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World
- Title: Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World
- Authors: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
- ISBN-10: 1633697622
- ISBN-13: 978-1633697621
- Hardcover (paperback not available at time of story): $22.31
Order your book today.
Designing & Leading Life-Changing Workshops: Creating the Conditions for Transformation in Your Groups, Trainings, and Retreats
- Title: Designing & Leading Life-Changing Workshops: Creating the Conditions for Transformation in Your Groups, Trainings, and Retreats
- Authors: Ken Nelson, David Ronka, Lesli Lang, Liz Korabek-Emerson, and Jim White
- ISBN-10: 1732003300
- ISBN-13: 978-1732003309
- Paperback: $25.65
Order your book today.
Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos
- Title: Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos
- Authors: Darrell K. Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steven H. Berez
- ISBN-10: 163369870X
- ISBN-13: 978-1633698703
- Hardcover (paperback not available at time of story): $17.99
Order your book today.
Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects (Second Edition)
- Title: Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects (Second Edition)
- Author: Harold Kerzner
- ISBN-10: 111993124X
- ISBN-13: 978-1119931249
- Hardcover (paperback not available at the time of story): $74.68
Order your book today.
Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
- Title: Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
- Authors: Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck
- ISBN-10: 0321150783
- ISBN-13: 978-0321150783
- Paperback: $54.94
Order your book today.
Level Up: The Guide to Great Video Game Design (Second Edition)
- Title: Level Up: The Guide to Great Video Game Design (Second Edition)
- Author: Scott Rogers
- ISBN-10: 1118877160
- ISBN-13: 978-1118877166
- Paperback: $34.00
Order your book today.
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
- Title: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
- Author: Chris Voss
- ISBN-10: 1847941486
- ISBN-13: 978-1847941480
- Paperback: $14.95
Order your book today.
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition)
- Title: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition)
- Author: Martin Fowler
- ISBN-10: 0134757599
- ISBN-13: 978-0134757599
- Hardcover (paperback not available at the time of story): $38.59
Order your book today.
Testing Computer Software
- Title: Testing Computer Software
- Authors: Cem Kaner, Jack Falk, and Hung Quoc Nguyen
- ISBN-10: 0471358460
- ISBN-13: 978-0471358466
- Paperback: $42.58
Order your book today.
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
- Title: The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
- Author: Michael Bungay Stanier
- ISBN-10: 0978440749
- ISBN-13: 978-0978440749
- Paperback: $7.58
Order your book today.
The Design Thinking Toolbox: A Guide to Mastering the Most Popular and Valuable Innovation Methods
- Title: The Design Thinking Toolbox: A Guide to Mastering the Most Popular and Valuable Innovation Methods
- Authors: Michael Lewrick, Patrick Link, and Larry Leifer
- ISBN-10: 1119629195
- ISBN-13: 978-1119629191
- Paperback: $26.00
Order your book today.
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
- Title: The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
- Author: Walter Isaacson
- ISBN-10: 1476708703
- ISBN-13: 978-1476708706
- Paperback: $14.29
Order your book today.
Thinking in Systems
- Title: Thinking in Systems
- Author: Donella H. Meadows
- ISBN-10: 1603580557
- ISBN-13: 978-1603580557
- Paperback: $20.66
Order your book today.
Conclusion
Leverage the 24 titles in this curated list of highly rated books to advance your lifelong learning, professional development, and continuous improvement. Level-up!
How to Cite This Article
Graffius, Scott M. (2023, December 15). 24 Highly Recommended Books on Agile and Tech: List for 2024. Available at: https://agilescrumguide.com/blog/files/asg-books-2024.html.
A short URL for this article is: https://bit.ly/books-2024
© Copyright 2023 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Top 7 Agile Thought Leaders to Follow on X: 2024 Report
15 January 2024
Agile Workflows
Introduction
If you're involved or interested in Agile — and you're on X (formerly known as Twitter) — this article highlights Agile thought leaders and influencers you may want to follow on the platform.
Here are the criteria and calculations for making the list for 2024.
We started with over 500 X (formerly known as Twitter) accounts and progressively refined the list down to the top seven. We're transparent about the criteria and calculations for making the list, so here's how we did it.
Note: AgileScrumGuide.com is owned by Scott M. Graffius, the author of two multi-award-winning books on Agile - Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change. Graffius is not listed in this Top 7 article so that there’s no appearance of a conflict of interest.
To qualify, accounts were required to meet all of the following six characteristics:
- Account is for a person or a professional association,
- Account is three or more years old,
- Account is active (defined as five or more tweets in the last 30 days),
- 1,000 or more tweets,
- 7,000 or more followers, and
- 90% or more of tweets have engagement (e.g., likes and retweets).
The accounts meeting the above qualifications were then weighted and ranked ordered on three factors:
- Number of followers (weighted at 1x),
- Number of tweets in the last 30 days (weighted at 1x), and
- Percent of tweets with engagement (because this reflects the effectiveness of tweets, and to what degree they are connecting with followers, it was weighted higher—at 3x).
The top seven accounts are based on the above criteria and calculations. Now, on to this list!
#1 | Project Management Institute (PMI)
- Twitter handle: @PMInstitute
- Direct link: https://twitter.com/PMInstitute
- Bio/description as it appears on Twitter account: Our mission—Making you and your projects more successful
#2 | Henrik Kniberg
- Twitter handle: @HenrikKniberg
- Direct link: https://twitter.com/henrikkniberg
- Bio/description as it appears on Twitter account: Former Minecraft game designer/developer/coach @ Mojang. Cofounder of http://GoClimate.com. Like to jam! Previously Spotify/LEGO. I'm MrHenrik in MC.
#3 | Scrum.org
- Twitter handle: @ScrumDotOrg
- Direct link: https://twitter.com/Scrumdotorg
- Bio/description as it appears on Twitter account: Scrum.org, the Home of Scrum, was founded by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber as a mission-based organization to help people and teams solve complex problems.
#4 | Jeff Sutherland
- Twitter handle: @JeffSutherland
- Direct link: https://twitter.com/JeffSutherland
- Bio/description as it appears on Twitter account: Co-Creator of #Scrum and #ScrumatScale and Signatory of the #AgileManifesto
#5 | Mike Cohn
- Twitter handle: @MikeWCohn
- Direct link: https://twitter.com/MikeWCohn
- Bio/description as it appears on Twitter account: I'm an agile software development consultant, trainer, author and practitioner. I blog at http://mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog #MGSClasses
#6 | Agile Alliance
- Twitter handle: @AgileAlliance
- Direct link: https://twitter.com/AgileAlliance
- Bio/description as it appears on Twitter account: #Agile Alliance is a global nonprofit membership organization dedicated to people and organizations that apply the values and principles of the #AgileManifesto
#7 | Scrum Alliance
- Twitter handle: @ScrumAlliance
- Direct link: https://twitter.com/ScrumAlliance
- Bio/description as it appears on Twitter account: We advance real-world agility by equipping changemakers with what they need to get the job and get the job done.
Conclusion
If you're involved or interested in Agile and you're on X, be sure to follow the seven agile thought leaders and influencers highlighted in this article.
How to Cite This Article
Graffius, Scott M. (2024, January 15). Top 7 Agile Thought Leaders to Follow on X: 2024 Report. Available at: https://agilescrumguide.com/blog/files/leaders-2024.html.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, SA, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, SFE, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management practitioner, consultant, multi-award-winning author, and international keynote speaker. He is the Founder of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ and subsidiary Exceptional Agility™. He has generated over $1.9 billion of business value in aggregate for Global Fortune 500 businesses and other organizations he has served. Graffius and content from his books (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change), talks, workshops, and more have been featured and used by businesses, professional associations, governments, and universities. Examples include Microsoft, Oracle, Broadcom, Cisco, Gartner, Project Management Institute, IEEE, Qantas, National Academy of Sciences, United States Department of Energy, New Zealand Ministry of Education, Yale University, Tufts University, and others. He has delighted audiences with dynamic and engaging talks and workshops on agile, project management, and technology leadership at 89 conferences and other events across 25 countries.
Connect with Scott on:
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on:
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on:
The short link for this article is: https://bit.ly/7-leaders
© Copyright 2024 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Ford Motor Company Features Work by Teamcraft Expert Scott M. Graffius
28 March 2024
Agile Workflows
Scott M. Graffius is an Agile Technology leader, consultant, contractor, creator, researcher, award-winning author (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change), and international public speaker.
Graffius’ copyrighted ‘Phases of Team Development’ work is valued, featured, and used by businesses, professional associations, government agencies, and universities around the world. Examples include Yale University, IEEE, Constructor Institute (Switzerland), Adobe, Boston University, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, United States National Park Service, Bayer, University of Galway (Ireland), Hasso Plattner Institute (Germany), American Management Association, UC San Diego, and many more.
Ford was added to the list.
Email 1 of 3 is shown above.
Email 2 of 3 is shown above.
Email 3 of 3 is shown above.
More Information on Graffius' 'Phases of Team Development'
Informed by the research of Bruce W. Tuckman and Mary Ann C. Jensen, over 100 subsequent studies, and Scott M. Graffius' first-hand professional experience with, and analysis of, team leadership and performance, Graffius created his ‘Phases of Team Development.’ It’s a unique perspective and visual conveying the five phases of team development — Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. It’s also inclusive of a graph showing how performance varies by phase, as well as the characteristics and strategies for each phase.
Leaders of teams — Project Managers, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, DevOps Leads, and others — can apply the information to help handle challenges or issues experienced by teams. By doing so, they’ll advance the teams’ (and their own) happiness, productivity, and success.
Graffius initially developed the material in 2008, and he periodically refreshes it. For details on the current (2024) edition including permission request information, high resolution files, and more, see our article here.
Graffius has presented talks and workshops at 89 conferences and other events across 25 countries. While each session is unique, the top topic is high performance teams. In those sessions, he expands upon on his ‘Phases of Team Development’ work. Sessions are dynamic, engaging, and packed with fresh insights and usable information. They’re highly rated by attendees and organizers alike. Visit here to learn more.
About Ford
Ford Motor Company is a multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. Ford develops and delivers Ford trucks, sport utility vehicles, commercial vans and cars, and Lincoln luxury vehicles. The company does that through three customer-centered business segments: Ford Blue, engineering gas-powered and hybrid vehicles; Ford Model e, developing electric vehicles (EVs); and Ford Pro, helping commercial customers transform and expand their businesses with vehicles and services tailored to their needs. Additionally, Ford provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company. Ford employs about 177,000 people worldwide. More information about the company and its products and services is available at https://corporate.ford.com.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, SA, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, SFE, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management practitioner, consultant, multi-award-winning author, and international keynote speaker. He is the Founder of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ and subsidiary Exceptional Agility™. He has generated over $1.9 billion of business value in aggregate for Global Fortune 500 businesses and other organizations he has served. Graffius and content from his books (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change), talks, workshops, and more have been featured and used by businesses, professional associations, governments, and universities. Examples include Microsoft, Oracle, Broadcom, Cisco, Gartner, Project Management Institute, IEEE, Qantas, National Academy of Sciences, United States Department of Energy, New Zealand Ministry of Education, Yale University, Tufts University, and others. He has delighted audiences with dynamic and engaging talks and workshops on agile, project management, and technology leadership at 89 conferences and other events across 25 countries.
Connect with Scott on:
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on:
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on:
© Copyright 2024 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com. .
The Agile Coach: 2024 Edition
05 April 2024
This article presents the 2024 edition of The Agile Coach infographic visual developed by Scott M. Graffius. It also provides details on the work of Agile Coaches. Including supporting information, it's organized into eight sections:
- Introduction
- The Agile Coach Infographic Visual
- Values, Guiding Principles, Focus Areas, Tools, and Activities for Agile Coaches
- The Agile Coach as a Change Agent
- Conclusion
- References
- How to Cite This Article
- How to Request Permission
Introduction
The demand for Agile—and Agile expertise—is soaring. Here are apt quotes on customer needs and the most popular Agile approach, Scrum.
"Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive. Traditional development and delivery frameworks such as waterfall are often ineffective. In contrast, Scrum is a value-driven agile approach which incorporates adjustments based on regular and repeated customer and stakeholder feedback. And Scrum’s built-in rapid response to change leads to substantial benefits such as fast time-to-market, higher satisfaction, and continuous improvement—which supports innovation and drives competitive advantage." — Scott M. Graffius, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
"Thriving in today’s marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more Agile." — Scott M. Graffius, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Organizations are increasingly embracing Agile to best meet their business needs and an Agile Coach can increase the chances of a successful agile adoption or improvement (Dikert, Paasivaara & Lassenius, 2016) (Sureshchandra & Shrinivasavadhani, 2008).
Some define the Agile Coach role as "an individual who coaches agile teams" or a similar self-descriptive representation. Here's a more helpful definition of the role (and examples and other examples follow later in this article):
"The individual is an agile expert who provides guidance for new agile implementations as well as existing agile teams. The agile coach is experienced in employing agile techniques in different environments and has successfully run diverse agile projects. The individual builds and maintains relationships with everyone involved, coaches individuals, trains groups, and facilitates interactive workshops. The agile coach is typically from outside the organization, and the role may be temporary or permanent." (Graffius, 2019)
The Agile Coach Infographic Visual
In 2019, Scott M. Graffius first developed The Agile Coach as a high-level visual on the role. He periodically updates his respective work. The top of this article shows the 2024 edition. The visual highlights the values, guiding principles, focus areas, tools, and activities for Agile Coaches.
- Values include respect, courage, focus, openness, and commitment.
- Principles include collaboration, technical excellence, transparency, continuous improvement, simplicity, fast and frequent delivery, and high satisfaction.
- Focus areas include company; division or segment; product or service; tribe, squad, or team; and individuals.
- Tools include data collection, visualization, best techniques, feedback, and agile process tools.
- Activities include coaching, teaching, facilitating, and mentoring.
Values, Guiding Principles, Focus Areas, Tools, and Activities for Agile Coaches
This section elaborates on the values, guiding principles, focus areas, tools, and activities for Agile Coaches.
Values. Agile Coaches instill the core values that underpin Agile success. These include:
- Respect: Valuing diverse perspectives and contributions.
- Courage: The ability to speak up, challenge the status quo, and do the right thing.
- Focus: Maintaining a clear vision and prioritizing work that delivers the most value.
- Openness: Candid about the work and its challenges.
- Commitment: Dedication to the team/department/company and its goals.
Principles. Guided by the values, the principles include:
- Collaboration: Working together towards shared objectives.
- Technical excellence: Delivering high-quality work that is maintainable and scalable.
- Transparency: Fostering open communication and information sharing.
- Continuous improvement: A commitment and practice to constantly learn and evolve.
- Simplicity: Doing the least amount of work needed to achieve the objective or outcome.
- Fast and frequent delivery: Agile’s iterative and short-cycle incremental approach results in the rapid and frequent delivery of working products and services.
- High satisfaction: Delivering product and service features and functionality that offer value to the customer/user fosters and supports their satisfaction as well as the satisfaction of those doing the work.
Focus. Agile Coaches ensure a balanced focus across the organization. This may cover the company, division/segment, product/service, tribe/squad/team, and/or individuals to help the organization transform their processes and achieve its mission and strategic objectives. Examples follow.
- Company-wide strategy alignment: Agile Coaches ensure that team initiatives are aligned with broader company goals and objectives. They help bridge the gap between individual teams and the larger organization, fostering a unified approach to achieving business objectives.
- Division/segment/departmental performance: Agile principles can be applied across different departments within an organization. Agile Coaches can help technology and non-technology areas adopt Agile practices, leading to increased efficiency and improved collaboration across the company.
- The product or service itself: Understanding the product vision, roadmap, and user needs is crucial. Agile Coaches help teams prioritize features, delineate work into manageable user stories/requirements, and ensure the product delivers value to the customer.
- Tribe/squad/team dynamics: Building strong, self-organizing teams is essential for Agile success. Agile Coaches help foster collaboration, communication, and psychological safety within groups (which may be called tribes, squads, or teams), encouraging them to work effectively towards shared goals.
- Growth of individuals: Agile Coaches support the professional development of individuals. This could involve providing coaching on specific skills, identifying training opportunities, and encouraging knowledge sharing within the team.
Tools. Agile Coaches equip others with the tools — including data collection, visualization, best techniques, feedback, and agile process tools — needed to prosper in Agile environments. Examples follow.
- Data Collection and Analysis: Data-driven decision-making is crucial. Agile Coaches encourage teams to collect data on various metrics, such as velocity, cycle time, and defect rates. They then help teams analyze this data to identify areas for improvement and continuously refine their Agile practices.
- Visualization tools: Kanban boards, burndown charts, information radiators, and other visual tools provide beneficial views on the status of work.
- Best Techniques: There's a vast array of Agile techniques. Agile Coaches help teams select the most appropriate techniques for their specific context. This could involve introducing techniques like pair programming, test-driven development, or user story mapping.
- Feedback: Agile Coaches emphasize the importance of regular constructive feedback. They encourage team members to provide feedback to each other, as well as actively seek feedback from stakeholders throughout the development process.
- Agile process: Agile Coaches are skilled facilitators who can help with Agile processes such as Agile events/ceremonies. Examples include Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-Up Meetings, Sprint Review, and the Sprint Retrospective.
Activities. Activities are covered individually. In practice, however, they may overlap. Examples of activities — coaching, teaching, facilitating, and mentoring — follow.
- Coaching: Partnering with others in a process that helps them develop personally and professionally. This typically involves leveraging a wide array of knowledge and skills (such as technical expertise, business/product development/innovation expertise, organizational development/change management expertise, and more).
- Teaching: Instructing others in specific knowledge and skills.
- Facilitating: Guiding others through processes to help them arrive at solutions and formulate decisions.
- Mentoring: Sharing knowledge and skills with others to foster their personal and professional growth.
Also, see the Agile Coach definition provided earlier in this article.
The Agile Coach as a Change Agent
Additionally, Agile Coaches serve as catalysts for cultural transformation within organizations. They help bridge the gap between traditional structures and the collaborative, fast-paced environment that Agile fosters. Agile Coaches usually achieve this through multiple means such as:
- Facilitating Open Communication: Agile practices rely on open communication and information sharing across all levels of the organization. Agile Coaches encourage open dialogue, helping to break down silos and fostering a culture of transparency.
- Empowering Teams: Agile Coaches empower teams to make decisions, take ownership of their work, and hold themselves accountable for results. This supports the development of effective self-organizing/self-managing teams.
- Managing Resistance to Change: Transitioning to Agile can be challenging. Agile Coaches serve as change agents, helping to manage resistance through clear communication, addressing concerns, and highlighting the benefits of Agile adoption.
- Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Agile Coaches instill a culture of continuous improvement. It involves encouraging experimentation, the practice of inspect and learn, and more.
Conclusion
Organizations looking to embrace Agile or enhance their existing Agile practices should consider bringing in an Agile Coach. Their expertise and guidance can be the key to unlocking the full potential of Agile and achieving remarkable results. Agile Coaches are highly skilled and adaptable professionals who can tailor their approach to the exacting needs of the organization. Their versatility allows them to work with various stakeholders to ensure everyone is well-aligned with the Agile transformation journey. Investing in an Agile Coach is an investment in the organization’s success.
References/Sources
- Adkins, Lyssa (2010). Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Addison-Wesley Professional. Order your book today.
- Agile Alliance (2022, March). Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching (Version 2.0). Available at: https://www.agilealliance.org/agile-coaching-code-of-ethical-conduct/.
- CFO South Africa (2021, August 19). Agile Leadership Unlocked [Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJZiitw5tHo&t=359s.
- Dikert, K.; Paasivaara, M.; and Lassenius, C. (2016). Challenges and Success Factors for Large-Scale Agile Transformations: A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Systems and Software, 119: 87-108.
- Exceptional Agility (2023, April 13). Scott M. Graffius Presenting "The Science of High-Performance Teams" at DevOps Institute Conference. Available at: https://exceptionalagility.com/blog/files/doi-conf.html.
- Ganesh, N.; and Thangasamy, S. (2012). Lessons Learned in Transforming from Traditional to Agile Development. Journal of Computer Science, 8 (3): 389-392.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2024, January 8). Scott M. Graffius’ Phases of Team Development: 2024 Update. Available at: https://scottgraffius.com/blog/files/teams-2024.html. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28629.40168.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2023, July 15). Successful Video Game Development Teams Leverage an Extensive Range of Hard Skills and Soft Skills. Available at: https://scottgraffius.com/blog/files/gamedev.html. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.31205.17124.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2023, June 29). What Successful AI Teams Have in Common [Presentation]. Talk delivered at Conf42 Quantum Computing 2023 Conference. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29382.45120. DOI link: https://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.29382.45120.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2023). The Agile Coach: An Infographic (2023 Edition). Available at: https://agilescrumguide.com/blog/files/the-agile-coach-2023.html.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2020). Definition of Agile Culture. Available at: https://www.scottgraffius.com/blog/files/agile-culture.html. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.11170.35521.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2019): Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change. North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace. Order your book today.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2016). Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace. Order your book today.
- Jovanovic, M.; Mas, A.; Mesquida, A.L.; and Lali c, B. (2017). Transition of Organizational Roles in Agile Transformation Process: A Grounded Theory Approach. Journal of Systems and Software, 133: 174-194.
- Kerzner, Harold (2022). Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects (Second Edition). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Order your book today.
- Meadows, Donella H. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A Primer. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing. Order this your today.
- Nelson, Ken; Ronka, David; Lang, Lesli; Korabek-Emerson, Liz; and White, Jim (2020). Designing & Leading Life-Changing Workshops: Creating the Conditions for Transformation in Your Groups, Trainings, and Retreats. Kittery Point, Maine: Cliffhouse Press. Order your book today.
- Scrum Alliance (n.d.). The Growing Impact of Agile Coaching: Notes from the Research Study on Agile Coaching from SINTEF. Available at: https://resources.scrumalliance.org/Article/growing-impact-agile-coaching.
- Stanier, Michael Bungay (2016). The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Page Two. Order your book today.
- Sureshchandra, K.; and Shrinivasavadhani, J. (2008). Moving from Waterfall to Agile. Proceedings from Agile, 2008: AGILE ’08 Conference. Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
- Thompson, S.; and Cox, E. (2017). How Coaching is Used and Understood by Project Managers in organizations. Project Management Journal, 48 (5): 64-77.
How to Cite This Article
Graffius, Scott M. (2024, April 5). The Agile Coach: 2024 Edition. Available at: https://agilescrumguide.com/blog/files/tac-2024.html. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27752.07682.
How to Request Permission
To request permission to use Scott M. Graffius' The Agile Coach infographic visual, contact Scott M. Graffius.
If your request is approved, a high resolution version of the image will be provided along with applicable terms and conditions.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius, PMP, SA, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSM, CSPO, SFE, ITIL, LSSGB is an agile project management practitioner, consultant, multi-award-winning author, and international keynote speaker. He is the Founder of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ and subsidiary Exceptional Agility™. He has generated over $1.9 billion of business value in aggregate for Global Fortune 500 businesses and other organizations he has served. Graffius and content from his books (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change), talks, workshops, and more have been featured and used by businesses, professional associations, governments, and universities. Examples include Microsoft, Oracle, Broadcom, Cisco, Gartner, Project Management Institute, IEEE, Qantas, National Academy of Sciences, United States Department of Energy, New Zealand Ministry of Education, Yale University, Tufts University, and others. He has delighted audiences with dynamic and engaging talks and workshops on agile, project management, and technology leadership at 89 conferences and other events across 25 countries.
Connect with Scott on:
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
About Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.
Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author's perspective as an agile coach.
The award-winning book by Scott M. Graffius is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on:
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on:
The short link for this article is: https://bit.ly/tac-24
© Copyright 2024 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
The Sound of Innovation: Digital Transformation Told Through a Story About Apple Music
15 October 2024
Agile Workflows
Digital Transformation
First covered by Scott M. Graffius in 2017¹, this article provides a refreshed and expanded coverage of digital transformation. It features Apple Music and reports key steps, business benefits, and how agile can help deliver results quickly.
Digital transformation is about leveraging data and connectivity to change how the business competes and adds value. Leaders who don’t seize this opportunity will see their organization's business value erode.
Digital transformation involves three key steps:
- Convert data to insight. Collect, analyze, and make sense of data.
- Impart insight to action. Leverage the insight as an action within a business process or other application.
- Convert action to outcome. Invent new or reinvent existing business processes or models, creating a stronger value proposition.
Next, the three key points will be told in a story involving Apple Music. In this section, the author takes some creative liberties, providing an imaginative narrative on aspects of Apple Music in the story.
1. Convert Data to Insight
Think about data as raw material. It’s abundant and surrounds us in every corner of the digital world. However, data itself is meaningless until we shape it into something valuable. Picture Apple Music. It’s not just a streaming platform; it’s an engine of understanding. Millions of users interact with it daily, generating considerable data—what customers listen to, when, how often, and in what context.
Simply listing the numbers is easy. But Apple’s ability to take those numbers and extract a story sets it apart. Recently, the platform noticed an emerging trend—users in certain regions were gravitating toward playlists that combined the energy of hip-hop with the soul of country music. Apple wasn’t pushing it; it’s something the data indicated. The insight? People wanted to explore new, exciting combinations. By converting data to insight, Apple unlocked the possibility of giving people something they didn’t even know they wanted.
2. Impart Insight to Action
Insights are powerful, but their value is only realized when implemented. At Apple Music, insights aren't just theoretical—they’re the fuel that drives the entire experience. Once Apple understood that its listeners were craving a blend of genres like hip-hop and country, it didn’t stop at that realization. It transformed that insight into action.
Apple Music used this discovery to create curated playlists like 'Hip-Hop Meets Country.' But it didn’t stop there. By integrating this insight into the recommendation engine, it began offering personalized mixes deeper than surface-level tastes. Now, when a listener opens the app, it’s as if Apple Music has anticipated their mood and vibe, and it offers them a playlist that feels like it was made just for them. Insight, when applied to action, transforms a passive experience into something that feels intuitive, almost magical. That’s the kind of experience that Apple is after.
3. Convert Action to Outcome
Action, however, is just the bridge. The final step in this transformation is turning that action into real outcomes. Let’s stay with the Apple Music example. By continuously analyzing user preferences and using those insights to evolve offerings, Apple creates a deeper connection with the listener. The results are tangible. Listeners spend more time on the platform, they engage more with playlists, and they discover artists they might never have encountered otherwise.
But beyond just engagement, there’s a greater outcome at play—customer loyalty. People don’t just use Apple Music; they feel like it understands them. That’s the outcome of translating insight into action, and then nurturing it until it becomes a better product. With every new feature and update, Apple reinforces that value. When done right, Apple Music is not just creating playlists; it’s building relationships, trust, and ultimately, legacy.
Digital transformation can result in significant benefits including one or more of the following:
- Enhanced customer experience and loyalty
- Innovation and improved competitive advantage
- Achieve faster return on investment (ROI)
- Better products/services
- Faster time-to-market
- Reduced waste
- Cost reduction
- Increased profit margins
- Secure and expand market share
- Enhanced operational agility
Digital transformation is about revolutionizing the way business is done, and an agile approach can help teams adapt and deliver value quickly. That supports innovation and success in a rapidly evolving world.
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Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
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About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius is a global leader in agile project management, an expert on teamwork tradecraft, an authority on temporal dynamics on social media platforms, a creator, a consultant and contractor, a trainer, a researcher, an award-winning author (Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change), and an international public speaker.
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Footnotes
¹ Graffius, Scott M. (2017, October 3). 7 Business Benefits of Digital Transformation and How Agile Can Help Deliver Results Quickly. ScottGraffius.com. Available at: https://scottgraffius.com/blog/files/7-Business-Benefits-of-Digital-Transformation-and-How-Agile-Can-Help-Deliver-Results-Quickly.html.
Bibliography/References
- Apple (2015, June 8). Introducing Apple Music — All The Ways You Love Music. All in One Place. Available at: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2015/06/08Introducing-Apple-Music-All-The-Ways-You-Love-Music-All-in-One-Place-/.
- Davenport, Thomas H., & Redman, Thomas C. (2020, May 21). Digital Transformation Comes Down to Talent in 4 Key Areas. Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2020/05/digital-transformation-comes-down-to-talent-in-4-key-areas.
- Exceptional Agility (2023, April 10). What's the Future of Agile? Available at: https://exceptionalagility.com/blog/files/the-future.html.
- Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions (2024, January 5). Leverage the Phases of Team Development -- Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning -- to Help Your Teams be Happier and More Productive: 2024 Update. Available at: https://www.exceptional-pmo.com/blog/files/team-development-2024.html.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2024, May 3). Leverage Agile and AI to Innovate at the Speed of Light [Workshop]. Session delivered at a private/corporate event in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.30790.48960.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2023, June 29). What Successful AI Teams Have in Common [Presentation]. Talk delivered at Conf42 Quantum Computing 2023 Conference. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29382.45120.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2023, May 1). Fueling the Development of Innovative and Life-Changing AI Solutions [Presentation]. Talk delivered to an audience of Technology professionals (including Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, Data Engineers, AI Researchers, Project Managers, Business Analysts, UX Designers, Software Developers, Cloud Architects, Data Privacy and Security Specialists, and others involved or interested in AI) at a private event in Mountain View, California, United States. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27956.73601.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2019). Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change. Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2018, October 18). Agile Scrum Helps Innovators, Disruptors, and Entrepreneurs Develop and Deliver Products at Astounding Speed Which Drives Competitive Advantage [Presentation]. Talk delivered at Techstars Startup Week Conference. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25009.12647.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2017, October 3). 7 Business Benefits of Digital Transformation and How Agile Can Help Deliver Results Quickly. ScottGraffius.com. Available at: https://scottgraffius.com/blog/files/7-Business-Benefits-of-Digital-Transformation-and-How-Agile-Can-Help-Deliver-Results-Quickly.html.
- Graffius, Scott M. (2016). Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace.
- Kerzner, Harold (2022). Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects (Second Edition). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- Kraus, S., Durst, S., Ferreira J. J., Veiga, P., Kailer, N., & Weinmann, A. (2022). Digital transformation in business and management research: An overview of the current status quo. International Journal of Information Management, 63 (4): 1-18. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2021.102466.
- Lamarre, E., Chheda, S., Riba, M., Genest, V., & Nizam, A. (2023). The Value of Digital Transformation. Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2023/07/the-value-of-digital-transformation.
- Morsa, Luigi (2022, July 7). Agile. Creativity. Innovation. International Institute for Learning. Available at: https://blog.iil.com/agile-creativity-innovation/.
- Nadkarni, S., & Prügl, R. (2021). Digital Transformation: A Review, Synthesis, and Opportunities for Future Research. Management Review Quarterly, 71: 233-341. DOI: 10.1007/s11301-020-00185-7.
- Vial, G. (2019). Understanding digital transformation: A review and a research agenda, The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 28 (2): 118-144. DOI: 10.1016/J.JSIS.2019.01.003.
How to Cite This Article
Graffius, Scott M. (2024, October 15). The Sound of Innovation: Digital Transformation Told Through a Story About Apple Music. AgileScrumGuide.com. Available at: https://agilescrumguide.com/blog/files/digital-transformation-featuring-apple-music.html. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27718.28489.
Content Acknowledgements
Apple and Apple Music names are the property of Apple, Inc.
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